After casting a black head in the Netflix documentary” Queen Cleopatra ,” discussion arises, and an Egyptian lawyer is sued.

Critics from around the world are furious about Netflix’s casting decision for the docudrama “African Queens: Queen Cleopatra,” with one Egyptian attorney going as far as filing a complaint against the media company for allegedly misrepresenting history.

In the new series, Adele James, who is of mixed ancestry, will play the Egyptian king, but many people are against casting the English actress as the famous queen. Most academics concur that the actual Cleopatra’s’s primary line was Grecian Macedonian when she was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 69 BC.

In February, the casting discussion was addressed on Netflix’s’s commercial website Tudum. The cast was” a smile to the centuries-long discussion about the ruler’s’s race ,” according to Jada Pinkett Smith, the executive producer of the show, who was quoted by the website.

“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them,” Pinkett Smith said, per Variety. 

This is entirely false, according to Zahi Hawass, a well-known Archaeologist and former minister of antiquities, who told the al-Masry-al-Youm news. Because Cleopatra was Greek, she had light skin and wasn’t dark.

“Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilization is black,” he said, per the BBC, while asking Egyptians to denounce the docudrama.

The public prosecutor received a complaint from attorney Mahmoud al-Semary against Netflix, according to the outlet, stating that” required legal steps” should be taken to block Netflix services in Egypt.

He claimed that the streaming juggernaut was attempting to” promote the Afrocentric thinking ,” which consists of statements and writings intended to distort and erase Egyptian identity.

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The petition “Cancel Netflix’s ‘Queen Cleopatra’” has more than 3,700 signatures on change.org, while a similar petition on the platform allegedly garnered 85,000 signatures before being removed, per The New York Post.

The YouTube comments feature on the official teaser is disabled. After being made available a week ago, it has now received over two million attitudes.

“Just FYI, this kind of behavior won’t be tolerated on my account. You will be blocked without hesitation!!!” James wrote, sharing screenshots of alleged messages she received from critics. 

” Do not watch the show if you don’t wish the castings.” Alternately, follow and participate in( expert ) opinions that differ from your own. In either case, I’m’m shocked and I always will be!

Netflix will release the docuseries on May 10.

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