Tina Gharavi defends the new Netflix docu-fiction, arriving on May 10th.
The clash around Regina Cleopatraupcoming docu-fiction of Netflix about Egypt’s famous last queen and how she fought to protect her throne, family and legacy, is turning sour. After the numerous criticisms that have overwhelmed the production and the actress Adele James to the cry “Cleopatra was not black”, a blame that forced the streaming service to deactivate the comments under the trailer of the work, and after the lawsuit filed by the Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary, according to which this representation does not “conform to Islamic and social values and principles, especially Egyptian ones” and therefore contradicts the story and promotes Afrocentrism, the director intervened on the issue Tina Gharavidefending the choices of production.
Queen Cleopatra director after criticism: A black actress looks more like her
In a text published by Varietythe director of Regina Cleopatra Tina Gharavi has responded to criticism of the casting of Adele James, a black and British actress, saying her team strove to compensate for the inaccuracies of previous films which depicted the Egyptian queen as a white woman. “After much discussion and countless auditions, we found Adele James, an actress who could convey not only Cleopatra’s beauty but also her strength,” Gharavi wrote. “What historians can confirm is that Cleopatra is more likely to look like Adele than she was Elizabeth Taylor“, the last great diva of the Hollywood era, also British, who played her in the 1963 cult film Cleopatra.
Cleopatra was also played by the Italian Monica Bellucci in the 2002 French comedy Asterix & Obelix – Mission Cleopatrawhile in 2020 it was announced that the Israeli Gal Gadot she would have stepped into the same shoes in a film by Patty Jenkins and Kari Skogland. In a previous statement, the manufacturers of Regina Cleopatraamong which Jada Pinkett Smithhad stated that “his ethnicity is not the focus of Regina Cleopatrabut we intentionally decided to depict her as a woman of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of Ancient Egypt”. In recent days, the famous archaeologist Zahi Hawass had joined the controversy by denouncing a ” falsification” of the facts and arguing that, since it is a documentary work, historical fidelity should be essential.
