'Queen Cleopatra': The controversy over Jada Pinkett Smith's Netflix series explained

Coming to Netflix screens next month: Queen Cleopatra, a four-part "docudrama," incorporating interviews from experts as well as reenactments and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith. But a heated debate over the actress cast as the iconic Egyptian ruler is here now.

Nearly three weeks ahead of its May 10 premiere, director Tina Gharavi has said that during filming she "became the target of a huge online hate campaign," and an Egyptian lawyer has filed a legal complaint that the series violates media laws and aims to "erase the Egyptian identity."

Here's a closer look:

Why are people so upset? And what are they saying?

Their issue is that Adele James, who is of mixed heritage, has been cast in the role of the title character, while, at the same time, the series is part of executive producer Smith's African Queens, which allows the audience to learn "about the fearless, captivating lives of queens who were likely not part of their Western academic curriculum." And there has been backlash from people in Egypt and elsewhere, who say the series is historically inaccurate for a Black woman to play the role.

Historians have debated the precise ancestry and race of Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt for 21 years, from 51 B.C. to 30 B.C. However, she is most often described as having been Macedonian Greek on her father's side. In Stacy Schiff's acclaimed biography Cleopatra: A Life, the author wrote that Cleopatra was Greek and "approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor." Ancestry of the queen's mother is unknown.

How has the show responded?

Netflix is obviously well aware of the criticism. "The creative choice to cast an actor of mixed heritage to play Cleopatra is a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler's race," a post on the streamer's official blog reads. "During the time of her reign, Egypt's population was multicultural and multiracial. Cleopatra's race was unlikely to be documented, and the identities of her mother and paternal grandparents weren't known. Some speculate she was a native Egyptian woman, while others say she was Greek."

Also, race wasn't talked about then in the same way it is now.

"To ask whether someone was 'Black' or 'white' is anachronistic," Rebecca Futo Kennedy, an associate professor of classics at Denison University, told Time. She added that it "says more about modern political investments than attempting to understand antiquity on its own terms."

Gharavi herself wrote about the uproar Friday for Variety.

"Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress. For me, the idea that people had gotten it so incredibly wrong before — historically, from Theda Bara to Monica Bellucci, and recently, with Angelina Jolie and Gal Gadot in the running to play her — meant we had to get it even more right," she wrote. "The hunt was on to find the right performer to bring Cleopatra into the 21st century."

She also asked some interesting questions.

"Why shouldn't Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter."

And the star of the series has shared some of the hateful comments that she's received on social media, explaining that she banned the offenders.

"If you don't like the casting don't watch the show," she tweeted. "Or do & engage in (expert) opinion different to yours. Either way, I'M GASSED and will continue to be!"

What have people said about the women who have previously portrayed Cleopatra?

James, of course, isn't the first to play the woman who continues to be talked about worldwide thousands of years after she died.

Taylor, whose portrayal is the most renowned, starred in the 1963 movie Cleopatra, which infamously endured a disastrous shoot — it's where Taylor and Richard Burton coupled up — that led to it becoming the most expensive movie ever made. Reviews for the movie were mixed, but it topped the box office and eventually won four Oscars.

As recounted in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Taylor encountered criticism for a different reason: She had converted to Judaism before marrying Eddie Fisher. The fact that she had been supportive of Israel meant that Egypt, who considered the country their enemy, banned her film.

Even before that, actresses including Theda Bara (1917's Cleopatra) and Vivian Leigh (1945's Caesar and Cleopatra) had played her.

She's not the first person to face backlash either.

Gal Gadot experienced criticism in 2020 when she stepped into the role for an unreleased film. Angelina Jolie, who has long been linked to a movie based on Schiff's book, has been accused of "whitewashing" Hollywood.

The director behind the latest project defended her decision to cast the person she did: "After much hang-wringing and countless auditions, we found in Adele James an actor who could convey not only Cleopatra's beauty, but also her strength. What the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did."

Queen Cleopatra is available Wednesday, May 10 on Netflix.