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Queen Cleopatra, the four-episode documentary-drama by Netflix, has received the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score in the history of media and television. At the time of this article's writing, the docu-drama, centered around the famed Egyptian monarch and lover of Mark Antony, has a 20% rotten score and an abysmal 3% audience score. The audience score was originally 1% before it bumped up.
The Cleopatra docu-drama series is a part of the African Queens series produced by Jada Pinkett Smith. While the four episodes of the first season of African Queens focus on Queen Njinga of Ndongdo and Matamba, the second season centers on Cleopatra.
As per NME, Mahmoud Al-Semary, an Egyptian lawyer, has sued Netflix for portraying Queen Cleopatra as a black woman, which was contrary to her historical depiction, which portrayed her as a Greek blonde woman. He has filed a case with a public prosecutor in Egypt to shut down the streaming service.
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According to the Egypt Independent news outlet, the lawyer also demanded that legal action be taken against the cast and crew of the documentary.
More on the case against Netflix's Queen Cleopatra
The case submitted by Al-Semary against Netflix stated that whatever the show had depicted regarding Cleopatra had not conformed to the societal values and principles set by Islam and did not conform to the values and principles of Egypt as well.
The case also added that there should have been pride in making the Queen Cleopatra series to ensure the preservation of Egyptian national and cultural identity. The case had also accused Netflix and the makers of the docu-drama series of "forgery."
The former antiquities minister of Egypt, Zahi Hawass, had claimed that the Netflix series was portraying false facts and said that the show was fake, stating that Cleopatra was not a black woman but a Greek blonde woman.
On May 18, 2023, Adele James, who plays Cleopatra in the series, addressed the backlash against her casting as the famous queen in an appearance on the podcast Steph's Packed Lunch alongside her co-star John Partridge, who plays Julius Caesar. During the podcast, she stressed that the docu-drama series was more than the question about her race:
"Yes, we don't know where her mother was from, or her paternal grandmother, but also, the show is about so much more than the question mark over her race."
She added that Queen Cleopatra's race was only a small part of what the show was trying to answer and depict regarding the queen.
"If you watch, it is a very small part of the conversation, really, this is about the fullness of who this woman was, and she was a human being, and she shouldn't be reduced to her race any more than I should or anybody should,"
However, the criticism against the show was not solely based on Cleopatra's race but was also against the story, narration, and characters. For instance, Joseph Fahim of the Middle East Eye said that the show had nothing aesthetic or intellectual to offer or engage with and that the series became a test of patience for him even when he was on the first episode.
Camilla Long of Times UK had called the Queen Cleopatra series a patchy and inferior version of Game of Thrones, where the cosplay of that series had interwoven itself with academics people had never heard of.
However, some critics were more positive about the show, with Melanie MacFarland of Salon.com saying that while Queen Cleopatra is not extraordinary from a production standpoint, it was still watchable. She said:
"While I still wouldn't call it extraordinary from a production standpoint, it is worth digesting in ways people easily incensed by its Blackness would never countenance."
Graeme Tuckett of stuff.co.nz had also praised the show, saying that lead actress and Queen Cleopatra portrayer Adele James was the best part of it.
This is not the first time that there has been a backlash against a project focusing on Queen Cleopatra. In 2020, fans accused Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and actress Gal Gadot of "whitewashing" Cleopatra when it was announced that the latter would be playing the role of the famed monarch in a biopic directed by Jenkins.
