Last summer, I was living in Venice Beach and had decided, due to a friend's persistence, to visit a fortune teller. I, always skeptical but wanting to laugh, agreed to go. What the fortune teller said made me roll my eyes: "I'm not saying you're Cleopatra, but you somehow share her story and are connected."
Less than a month later, I got a call from a production company making Jada Pinkett Smith's "African Queens" and was subsequently hired to direct four episodes of a dramatic documentary about the controversial leader's life. The joke was on me.
Stars: Adele James, Craig Russell, Nada El Belkasmi
I remember as a kid watching Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. I was captivated by her, but even then, I felt like the picture wasn't right. Was her skin really that white of hers?
Born in Iran, I am a Persian, and Cleopatra's heritage has been attributed at one time or another to the Greeks, the Macedonians, and the Persians. The known facts are that her Macedonian Greek family, the Ptolemaic lineage, intermarried with the Seleucid dynasty of western Asia and had been in Egypt for 300 years. Cleopatra was eight generations from these Ptolemaic ancestors, making the possibility of her being white unlikely. After 300 years, we can surely say for sure that Cleopatra was Egyptian. She was no more Greek or Macedonian than Rita Wilson or Jennifer Aniston. Both are a generation from Greece.
Doing some research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra played by a black actress. For me, the idea that people had gotten it so wrong before—historically, from Theda Bara to Monica Bellucci, and recently, with Angelina Jolie and Gal Gadot vying to play her—meant that we had to do even more right. The hunt was on to find the right artist to bring Cleopatra into the 21st century.
Why Cleopatra shouldn't be a melanized sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to her whiteness seems to give it value, and to some Egyptians it seems really important.
After many discussions and countless auditions, we found in Adele James an actress who could convey not only Cleopatra's beauty, but her strength as well. What historians can confirm is that Cleopatra was more likely to resemble Adele than Elizabeth Taylor.
As production neared, I realized the magnitude and political nature of this work. It was important to get it right, but also to find a way to tell the story with humanism and nuance: the last thing we needed was another Cleopatra divorced from her femininity and her power only sexualized from her. The HBO series "Rome" portrayed one of the world's most intelligent, sophisticated and powerful women as a sleazy, dissipated drug addict, but Egypt didn't seem to mind. Where was the outrage then? But portray her as black? Good.
Perhaps, it's not just that I've directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as black, but that I've asked the Egyptians to see themselves as African, and they're furious with me for it. I'm fine with this.
While filming, I became the target of a huge online hate campaign. The Egyptians accused me of “laundering” and “stealing” her story. Some threatened to ruin my career, which I wanted to tell you was ridiculous. I was ruining it very well, thank you very much! No amount of reasoning or reminders that the Arab invasions had yet to occur in Cleopatra's era seemed to stem the tide of ridiculous comments. Amir in his room in Cairo wrote to me to seriously appeal that "Cleopatra was Greek!" Alas, Laud! Why would that be a good thing for you, Amir? Are you Egyptian.
So Cleopatra was black? We don't know for sure, but we can be sure that she wasn't white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with.
Above all, we need to realize that Cleopatra's story is less about her than about who we are.
It's almost as if we don't realize that misogyny still has an effect on us today. We need to unleash our imagination and boldly create a world where we can explore our historical figures without fearing the complexity that comes with portraying them. I'm proud to support "Queen Cleopatra", a reimagined Cleopatra, and the team that made this. We reimagined a world over 2,000 years ago where an exceptional woman once ruled. I would like to draw a direct line between her and the women of Egypt who rose up in the Arab uprisings and my Persian sisters who today rebel against a brutal regime. Never before has it been more important to have women leaders: black or white.
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