Introduction: Two Years Later, It’s Still a Mess
Over the past decade, there’s been a growing push for diversity and inclusion in our media. In many cases, this is a good thing. Representation can empower audiences, challenge outdated norms, and bring attention to stories that were long ignored. But when diversity is prioritized at the expense of historical truth — especially in documentaries — we enter dangerous territory. Fiction has room to reimagine. Documentaries do not. When you present falsehoods under the banner of “fact,” you’re not just telling a story — you’re giving your audience a distorted version of history. And that’s exactly what Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra does.
In April 2023, Netflix released a four-episode docudrama miniseries titled Queen Cleopatra. It was meant to be part of a wider series on African queens, but it was immediately met with overwhelming controversy, not for its production value or storytelling, but for one glaring reason: the casting of Cleopatra as a Black woman.
At the time, I wrote a reaction to the now-infamous trailer, which featured the line: “I remember my grandmother telling me: I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was Black.” That single quote ignited a firestorm online, not just from historians and scholars, but from general audiences appalled by the show’s blatant historical revisionism.
Defenders of the series quickly turned to deflection — some accusing Egyptians (the very people whose history the show was supposedly honoring) of being racist. Perhaps the most absurd response came from The Daily Show, where host Dulcé Sloan dismissed the backlash by saying, “I didn’t hear ya’ll complain when The Mummy Movies came out,” As if a Brendan Fraser action fantasy and a documentary-style biopic were remotely comparable.
The backlash was so strong, the Egyptian government itself filed a lawsuit against Netflix. But even beyond the headlines and culture war debates, something deeper was at play — a growing frustration with media that prioritized ideology over accuracy.
Two years later, the landscape seems to be shifting. Studios, for the most part, appear to be pulling back from the more aggressively divisive, hyper-politicized storytelling that dominated much of the past decade. Whether this is market-driven, creatively inspired, or just fatigue setting in is up for debate. But it does give us space to look back at Queen Cleopatra not just as a flashpoint, but as a case study — a prime example of how not to make a historical documentary. This must be studied thoroughly for better or for worse.
1. Racewashing Cleopatra: Ideology Over Accuracy
Let’s get the show’s central controversy out of the way. Casting Cleopatra as Black wasn’t some bold artistic reinterpretation — it was an ideological move, deliberately pushed to the forefront of Netflix’s marketing. The series didn’t just racebend Cleopatra; it presented this casting choice as historical fact, while suggesting that anyone who questioned it was politically or racially motivated.
But here’s the problem: every credible historian, scholar, and academic institution agrees that Cleopatra VII was of Macedonian Greek descent. She belonged to the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Hellenistic royal line established by one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Her family ruled Egypt for centuries as a Greek aristocracy, living separately from native Egyptians. There is no credible evidence that Cleopatra was Sub-Saharan African — or what we would classify today as “Black.”
The show tries to paper over this with lines like “We don’t really know what Cleopatra looked like,” as if the absence of photographs somehow implies ambiguity. But we do know how she was portrayed in her own lifetime: through surviving statues, busts, coins, and engravings — all showing her with distinctly Greek features, traditional Hellenistic styling, and none resembling what’s shown here. And yet, the show never even acknowledges this visual record.
Even more bizarre is how the entire royal family — including her father, Ptolemy XII — is portrayed as dark-skinned. The show erases all nuance from ancient Egypt’s diverse ethnic composition: native Egyptians, Greeks (the ruling class), and large Jewish communities, particularly in Alexandria. Instead, it flattens everything into a modern American racial lens, completely divorced from the historical reality of a multicultural, Mediterranean society.
It’s worth clarifying: Cleopatra likely didn’t resemble Elizabeth Taylor’s portrayal either. She probably had olive-toned skin, not pale, more in line with modern Greeks or Levantines. No serious historian would argue otherwise. But acknowledging she wasn’t “white” in the Western-European sense doesn’t somehow validate turning her into a symbol of Afrocentric identity. Just because Egypt is in Africa doesn’t mean all its people looked the same, and to assume so is not just historically false, but deeply reductive.
The only ancient group in Egypt that may have resembled Sub-Saharan Africans was the Nubians, who were present as soldiers, merchants, and sometimes rivals, not part of the Greek-ruled elite. Cleopatra’s dynasty meticulously preserved its Macedonian lineage for generations.
So when the show claims to be “reclaiming history,” it’s not reclaiming — it’s rewriting. And worse, it’s doing so under the pretense of educational authority.
2. Questionable Experts, Activist History
One of the most important elements of any historical documentary is the credibility of its experts. When a show presents itself as educational, it has a responsibility to feature historians and scholars who are both qualified and objective. Queen Cleopatra fails spectacularly on this front. Instead of assembling a panel of Egyptologists, classical scholars, or historians of the Hellenistic period, the series relies almost exclusively on a curated selection of commentators with clear ideological agendas.
Rather than providing historical insight, these so-called experts allow their politics to dictate the narrative. What should have been a factual discussion about Cleopatra’s life becomes an exercise in race-based reinterpretation and cultural revisionism.
The most glaring example is Professor Shelley Haley, whose now-infamous line — “My grandmother told me Cleopatra was Black” — set the tone for the entire series. But her commentary goes well beyond that. Haley has a strange obsession with reframing ancient history through a contemporary Afrocentric lens, often veering into bizarre territory. At one point, she states: “The Nile River hasn’t flowed at the same level in years. Now, that’s not Cleopatra’s fault.”
Wait — why would it be? That’s not just a non-sequitur; it’s a baffling statement coming from someone billed as a historical authority.
Another frequent contributor is Islam Issa, the only Egyptian person interviewed in the show, though you wouldn’t know it from his presentation. Rather than offering grounded, regional insight, Issa sounds more like a London academic focused on modern racial equity discourse than someone deeply engaged with ancient Egyptian history. His claim that “Cleopatra can be anyone we imagine — I imagine her to have curly hair like me and a similar skin tone” isn’t just subjective — it’s antithetical to the purpose of historical scholarship. Personal projection is not evidence.
Then there’s an unnamed commentator described as someone who “teaches Black history to prison inmates.” While that may be admirable work, it does not make one qualified to speak authoritatively on Ptolemaic Egypt. Yet this person is given equal footing with academics who, ostensibly, specialize in ancient history.
Perhaps the only voice of reason in the entire production is Dr. Colleen Darnell, an actual Egyptologist, who comes across as enthusiastic, informed, and respectful of the subject matter. She discusses Cleopatra’s reign with clarity and without ideological spin. Later, Darnell revealed in an interview with Egyptian media that she was interviewed under false pretenses — she had no idea the show would push the narrative that Cleopatra was Black. She believed she was contributing to a balanced historical profile of Cleopatra as a powerful Egyptian ruler, not being used to legitimize an ahistorical agenda.
And that’s the problem in a nutshell: the show’s creators made no effort to consult with serious scholars in the relevant fields. No Egyptologists from Egypt. No historians specializing in the Ptolemaic era. Just a hand-picked list of talking heads willing to reinforce the show’s ideological premise, regardless of what actual evidence — or common sense — has to say.
When a documentary hires people who make claims that blatantly contradict both primary and secondary sources, it loses all credibility. And that, again, is a masterclass in what not to do when creating something that claims to be factual.
3. Deliberate Misrepresentation of Facts
This series doesn’t merely omit inconvenient details — it actively rewrites history. From Cleopatra’s lineage to the geopolitical state of her world, Queen Cleopatra bends or erases facts to fit a modern, progressive mold. It’s less concerned with educating the audience than with moralizing to them.
Rather than immersing us in the worldview of ancient Egyptians or Hellenistic rulers, the show presents its characters as if they’re suburban Americans with modern attitudes. Everyone speaks in 21st-century soundbites, and the nuance of ancient customs, political strategy, and dynastic conflict is flattened under the weight of identity politics.
One of the most egregious fabrications is the portrayal of Cleopatra as the architect of pan-African unity — a racialized feminist icon reclaiming power. There is no historical basis for this. Ptolemaic Egypt was a Greek-ruled state that maintained power by separating itself from native Egyptians, not uniting with them. Cleopatra’s use of Egyptian iconography was politically calculated, not evidence of cultural or racial identity.
And then there are the factual errors — not just small slips, but deliberate distortions:
- The series says “Rome was an emerging power.” No — by Cleopatra’s time, Rome was the power. It had dominated the Mediterranean for over a century, having conquered Carthage, Greece, and much of the Eastern Mediterranean long before Cleopatra took the throne.
- The show depicts Cleopatra as leading armies into battle with a sword in hand — a total fabrication. She never fought in combat. At one point, she’s shown taking command while Mark Antony cowers in a corner — a complete reversal of history.
- It even goes so far as to credit the naming of the month “July” to Cleopatra, rather than Julius Caesar — a mind-blowingly absurd claim with no evidence, historical or otherwise.
What’s worse is how the series whitewashes Cleopatra’s more nefarious actions. The political murders of her siblings — brothers and a sister, all rivals to her throne — are blamed on Caesar or anonymous advisors. Cleopatra is portrayed as either helpless or unaware, which conveniently removes her from any moral accountability. The show wants her to be flawless, not complex.
The misrepresentation continues with Rome’s annexation of Egypt. The series claims Rome “impoverished” Egypt, even showing the decaying Sphinx as if the Romans were to blame. That’s not just misleading — it’s laughable. The Sphinx was already over a thousand years old by Cleopatra’s time and had fallen into ruin long before Rome even existed as a republic, let alone an empire.
And perhaps the most insulting twist is how Jada Pinkett Smith and the filmmakers refer to all of this as “her truth.” Cleopatra, a historical figure who died over 2,000 years ago, is suddenly made into a vessel for modern cultural narratives. But the truth isn’t subjective when it comes to facts, and presenting these distortions as some kind of noble personal perspective is deeply dishonest.
Documentaries are supposed to deliver unfiltered facts, not reshape them to fit a modern agenda. In Queen Cleopatra, facts are not just manipulated — they’re betrayed.
4. Laughably Bad Acting and Production
When it comes to docudramas, no one expects anything massive. These types of shows usually don’t have the budgets or talent you’d find in a prestige HBO drama. But what any viewer should expect is effort. On that front, Queen Cleopatra doesn’t even clear the lowest bar.
Even on a technical level, this series is a mess. The overuse of slow-motion — even when completely unnecessary — drags the pacing into the ground. Scenes stretch for 10 or 15 minutes with characters repeating the same vague statements while the story grinds to a halt. It’s bloated, sluggish, and often completely empty of substance.
What’s happening onscreen often doesn’t even match what’s being said in narration or interviews. One perfect example: expert Islam Issa refers to Octavian’s “mammoth army” marching into Alexandria — but what we actually see is about five guys walking on sand. It’s unintentionally hilarious and deeply amateurish.
It reminded me of Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, a docudrama from over 20 years ago — and that had better production value, stronger acting, and far more narrative weight than anything on display here. The costuming in Queen Cleopatra looks like it came from a Halloween clearance bin on Temu. There’s no effort to ground the world in any believable visual culture.
Visually, the show fails to immerse the viewer in any meaningful way. The sets look like leftover props from a low-budget History Channel reenactment. There’s no atmosphere, no scale, and no effort to make the world feel real. It’s dull, flat, and lifeless — and yet, the show takes itself with such deadly seriousness that it becomes unbearable. It wants to be a sweeping historical epic, but without the quality, the tone, or the talent.
And perhaps all of these faults could have been overlooked — if the acting were good. About that…
The acting across the board is atrocious. Everyone is either wooden or melodramatic, but never in a way that’s fun or campy. Characters feel like caricatures — exaggerated, one-note parodies played totally straight. And they don’t even look like their real historical counterparts.
- Caesar looks more like a biker gangster than a Roman general.
- Mark Antony is portrayed as a hopeless drunk, looking like a college dropout.
- Octavian is the worst offender, turned into a whiny, entitled brat like budget Joffrey. You’re left wondering how this character was ever supposed to become Augustus Caesar.
These were towering figures in Roman history. But here, they’re reduced to hyper-masculine buffoons, constantly failing, lashing out, or cowering. Meanwhile, Cleopatra is elevated into a flawless revolutionary — cool, composed, brilliant, unchallenged. The show’s power dynamic is so skewed, it comes off as sexist in reverse: men are incompetent tyrants; women are divine. It’s not just inaccurate — it’s painfully on-the-nose.
And then there’s the dialogue, which might be the worst part. Most of it sounds like a high school TED Talk. One line, delivered with full gravitas in front of the Roman Senate, proclaims:
“There is no Rome without Egypt.”
It’s so historically ridiculous and self-important, it borders on parody. Except again — the show isn’t a parody. It plays this all with a straight face.
There was never any honest attempt to tell Cleopatra’s story with nuance, complexity, or historical fidelity. Just an agenda to push, wrapped in glossy visuals, wooden acting, and dialogue that would make even a soap opera writer blush.
5. A Documentary That Isn’t One
Of all Queen Cleopatra’s failures, the most damning is this: it fails completely as a documentary.
Instead of informing, it indoctrinates. Instead of educating, it agitates. The series adopts the appearance of scholarship — voiceover narration, expert interviews, dramatic reenactments — but it’s structured like a PR campaign. The goal isn’t to explore history, but to rewrite it through the lens of modern identity politics.
A real documentary is committed to presenting facts, or at least clearly distinguishing between evidence and speculation. But Queen Cleopatra doesn’t even try. It blurs those lines so thoroughly that viewers unfamiliar with the subject could walk away with a completely false understanding of Cleopatra, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the ancient world at large.
Worse still, the show has the gall to call this “her truth” — as if truth itself is something that can be warped, molded, or owned. That kind of relativism has no place in a factual format. You can’t proclaim Cleopatra to be whatever you want her to be just because it suits a narrative. History doesn’t care about your feelings.
Perhaps some of this could have been forgiven if the show had just admitted it was fictionalized. If it were framed as alternate history, or speculative fiction — even satire — it might have found a place as a bold, if controversial, creative exercise. But no: this is marketed and presented as truth, and it’s anything but.
Even the production choices seem desperate to appear modern. The soundtrack is jarringly anachronistic, filled with pop and hip-hop cues that clash with the supposed time period. It feels less like ancient Egypt and more like a rejected CW drama pilot set in a vaguely historical fantasy world. The tone is so heavy-handed, so on-the-nose, it plays more like propaganda than storytelling.
This kind of ham-fisted messaging is something I normally associate with conservative filmmakers like Randall Wallace, just in the opposite direction, who twist history to push their own moralistic or nationalistic agendas. But this is no better. In fact, it may be worse, because it pretends to be educational while offering nothing but distortion.
In the end, Queen Cleopatra isn’t just a failure of filmmaking or historical storytelling — it’s a betrayal of the documentary form itself. And that’s not just bad entertainment. That’s dangerous.
Conclusion: A Lesson in What Not to Do
Let me be clear: bias alone doesn’t make a documentary bad. Many great filmmakers reflect their personal history, experiences, or perspectives in their work. That’s part of storytelling. But when bias becomes the sole driving force — when facts are bent, twisted, or outright erased to serve an agenda — it stops being a documentary and becomes something else entirely.
Queen Cleopatra is, without exaggeration, one of the worst attempts at historical storytelling I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen AI-generated videos on ancient history with more passion and accuracy than this — and that’s not hyperbole. At least those creators seem to care about what they’re talking about.
Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra is more than just a misfire — it’s a warning. This series doesn’t simply get a few things wrong; it builds its entire foundation on rewriting reality to fit a modern fantasy. It’s not historical analysis. It’s historical vandalism.
Some defenders — few though they are — try to excuse it by saying, “Just think of it as a fictionalized drama” or “It’s historical fiction, don’t take it so seriously.” But that argument doesn’t hold water. This isn’t a movie. It’s not a stage play. It’s not a miniseries. It is a documentary; it’s meant to present the honest facts to inform, not mislead. When that trust is broken, the entire purpose of the format collapses.
This goes far beyond creative license. This is Dinesh D’Souza’s Hillary’s America levels of historical misrepresentation. Complete distortion of reality, marketed as fact.
At a time when people increasingly turn to movies and shows for information, that’s not just lazy — it’s dangerous. Queen Cleopatra should be studied not for what it tried to say, but for what it failed to do: respect history, respect its viewers, and respect the craft of documentary storytelling.
At times, I genuinely wondered if someone behind the scenes knew it was terrible — that maybe this was deliberately sabotaged in the marketing. Why else would they lead the trailer with that now-infamous line, “My grandmother told me Cleopatra was Black,” especially in such a tense and polarized online climate? It’s as if the show was designed to provoke outrage first, inform never.
And that, more than anything else, is why Queen Cleopatra deserves to be remembered — not as representation, not as activism, but as a textbook example of how not to make a documentary.
