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Queen Cleopatra director Tina Gharayi defended the upcoming Netflix docudrama after criticism over the Black actress’s casting within the lead function.
Writing in Selection, the filmmaker argues, “it’s extra seemingly that Cleopatra appeared like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor,” who famously portrayed the historic determine in 1963’s Cleopatra.
“For me, the concept that individuals had gotten it so extremely unsuitable earlier than — traditionally, from Theda Bara to Monica Bellucci, and not too long ago, with Angelina Jolie and Gal Gadot within the working to play her — meant we needed to get it much more proper,” penned Gharayi.
She added, “Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some individuals want Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to whiteness appears to provide her worth, and for some Egyptians it appears to essentially matter.”
“After a lot hang-wringing and numerous auditions, we present in Adele James an actor who might convey not solely Cleopatra’s magnificence but additionally her energy. she continued. What the historians can affirm is that it’s extra seemingly that Cleopatra appeared like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did.”
“Maybe, it’s not simply that I’ve directed a sequence that portrays Cleopatra as Black, however that I’ve requested Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they’re livid at me for that. I’m okay with this.
So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for certain, however we will be sure she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We have to have a dialog with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with,” she stated.
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