The questions of historical inaccuracy and cultural appropriation—peppered with a predictable dose of racism—have made international headlines since the first trailer for the show dropped, introducing Cleopatra as a mixed-heritage Black woman.
Cleopatra’s race has long been regarded as ambiguous by scholars and historians. What we do know is that her father, Ptolemy XII, was of Macedonian-Greek descent, a member of the family that conquered Egypt more than 200 years before Cleopatra’s birth in 69 BC. Her mother’s identity, on the other hand, is unknown—although she may well have been Egyptian—which is where things get a little more complex.
To be clear, the docudrama isn’t, in fact, arguing that Cleopatra was a dark-skinned Black woman with no Macedonian-Greek heritage at all, although the media storm around it might make you assume otherwise. Rather, its creators, including scholar Shelley Haley, professor of classics and African studies at Hamilton College, have asked us to imagine her as a woman ofQueen Cleopatra
, but we did intentionally decide to depict her of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt,” a statement from Netflix reads. Unsurprisingly, past depictions of Cleopatra featuring white women have been critically and publicly acclaimed, with Vivien Leigh, Claudette Colbert, and Elizabeth Taylor all appearing as the Egyptian queen over the course of the 20th century. Not one of these women is Macedonian, Greek, or Egyptian, meaning their casting was no more “authentic” than James’s, and yet it never incited scandal.
Frankly, our obsession with “figuring out” Cleopatra’s race may not have shed much light on her actual heritage, but it tells us an awful lot about the current state of the world and the way in which it operates.
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