“Queen Cleopatra,” a Netflix docuseries, has recently received immense backlash due to the documentary’s controversial casting of Queen Cleopatra. The series is dramatized for effect, however, it tries to remain historically accurate. Fans were shocked to see the star of the Cleopatra Netflix documentary, Adele James, to be of African-American descent. While the first episode of “Queen Cleopatra” features a historian who provides reasoning that Cleopatra was indeed black, the show cuts away from the quote without any further examination of the contentious issue. 

The debate of Cleopatra’s skin color has been widely discussed by historians as there is no record of her mother’s race. However, historians mostly agree that she was of Macedonian or Egyptian descent due to the family’s history of intermarriage with the Macedonian Seleucid Dynasty. The idea that Cleopatra was of African descent is more unpopular and has little evidence to back it up.

Fans have criticized the casting of Cleopatra as historically inaccurate and misleading for those who do not know much about Cleopatra. Even legal experts have been bothered by Cleopatra’s depiction. Lawyer Essam Khalaf filed a lawsuit against the documentary, accusing it of falsifying an Egyptian historical symbol. However, star Adele James has stood her ground, saying that critics of her role are “fundamentally racist.”

Like James, defenders of the show have compared the casting of Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 “Cleopatra” film, where Cleopatra was white. The movie was well acclaimed at the time, and no controversies appeared in Cleopatra’s depiction.

Overall, the inaccuracies of the documentary were understandable even after I watched it in its entirety. Upon researching professional sources, how the documentary bent the story apart from the real-life accuracy was obvious.

I would recommend this documentary to those who want to watch an interesting and dramatic story about Queen Cleopatra but not to those who are interested in the actual historical details.