African Queens (TV series)

African Queens
Genre	Docudrama
Written by	Peres Owino Nnenne Iwuji
Directed by	Ethosheia Hylton Tina Gharavi
Starring	Adesuwa Oni Adele James
Narrated by	Jada Pinkett Smith
Music by	Michael 'Mikey' J Asante
Country of origin	United States United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	8
Production
Executive producer(s)	Jada Pinkett Smith
Cinematography	Sean Francis
Running time	45 minutes
Production company(s)	Dune Films Netflix Nutopia
Release
Original network	Netflix
Picture format	HDTV 1080p
Original release	February 15, 2023 (2023-02-15) – present (present)
External links
[{{#property:P856}} Website]

African Queens is a 2023 docudrama series focusing on female monarchs, airing on the streaming service Netflix. The series is produced and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith and features dramatized fictional re-enactments as well as interviews with experts. The first season covers Njinga, Queen of Ndongo and Matamba, and is directed by Ethosheia Hylton. The second season focuses on Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, Pharaoh Cleopatra VII Philopator, and is directed by Tina Gharavi.

Summary

The docu-drama series combines dramatic recreations with interviews with historians and people from the modern-day regions that the Queen ruled over. Producer Jada Pinkett Smith cited a lack of stories covering Black queens as her inspiration for helming the series. She said: "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."

For the first season, the life of Njinga, Queen of Ndongo and Matamba, is explored. Interviewees include Kellie Carter Jackson, Wellesley College associate professor in the Department of Africana Studies; Diambi Kabatusuila, the present-day traditional Queen of the Bakwa Luntu people in Central Kasaï; and Rosa Cruz e Silva, the former director of the National Archives of Angola.

The second season explores the reign of Cleopatra, queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Postdoctorate Black feminist and Classicist Professor Shelley P. Haley was interviewed for the second season.

Cast

African Queens: Njinga (2023)

• Adesuwa Oni as Queen Nzinga
• Eshe Asante as Ndambi
• Marilyn Nnadebe as Funji
• Chipo Kureya as Kambu
• Philips Nortey as King Mbande

Queen Cleopatra (2023)

• Adele James as Cleopatra
• Craig Russell as Mark Antony
• John Partridge as Julius Ceasar
• James Marlowe as Octavian
• Andira Crichlow as Arsinoe

Episodes

Season overview

Season		Episodes	Originally released

African Queens: Njinga

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date
1	1	"Death of a King"	Ethosheia Hylton	Peres Owino	February 15, 2023 (2023-02-15)
The life of Njinga prior to her accession, including her relationship with the Portuguese Empire's growing influence over her home.
2	2	"Power is Not Given"	Ethosheia Hylton	Peres Owino	February 15, 2023 (2023-02-15)
Njinga's brother and king of Ndongo, Mbandi, dies, thrusting Njinga into a powerful position.
3	3	"The Blood Oath"	Ethosheia Hylton	Nnenne Iwuji	February 15, 2023 (2023-02-15)
Njinga must make sacrifices and deals in order to solidify her power, marrying an Imbangala warlord Kasanje.
4	4	"Legacy"	Ethosheia Hylton	Nnenne Iwuji	February 15, 2023 (2023-02-15)
Njinga negotiates with the Portuguese to recognize her kingdom as independent.

Queen Cleopatra

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date
5	1	"Rivals"	Tina Gharavi	Peres Owino	May 10, 2023 (2023-05-10)
Cleopatra ascends the throne and her siblings vie for power as Julius Caesar meets her.
6	2	"When in Rome"	Tina Gharavi	Peres Owino	May 10, 2023 (2023-05-10)
The birth of Caesarion and assassination plots shape Cleopatra's reign and relationship with Rome.
7	3	"What Must Be Done"	Tina Gharavi	Nnenne Iwuji	May 10, 2023 (2023-05-10)
Cleopatra forges a relationship with Ceasar's rival Mark Antony and Cleopatra participates in the Battle of Actium.
8	4	"The Last Pharaoh"	Tina Gharavi	Nnenne Iwuji	May 10, 2023 (2023-05-10)
Octavian and the Roman army target Egypt. Cleopatra dies.

Release

The first season premiered on February 15, 2023. The second season premiered on May 10, 2023. With the release of each season, all episodes were released simultaneously on Netflix.

Reception

African Queens: Njinga

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 8 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10. Metacritic assigned African Queens: Njinga a weighted average score of 69 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Ellen E. Jones of The Guardian was critical of the first series, awarding it 2 out of 5 stars, saying that "This tale of a 17th-century African female ruler features impressive academics, but they're drowned out by poor-quality dramatic sequences. It lacks context, analysis or personality." Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter was also critical, saying that the format limited the ability to go deeply into the subject. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, however, praised the first series and gave it three out of four stars, saying while the "jazzy score and sometimes melodramatic dialogue occasionally [interrupts] the moment[, the show] keeps us involved and heats up the often violence-soaked drama in subsequent episodes". Luke Peppa of the Financial Times exclaims that, as in Njinga, with greater exposure to stories featuring African histories and myths, one might "even be inspired to create their own Africa-centric stories, [having a] wealth of stories that are yet to be told."

Queen Cleopatra

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 20% of 15 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Queen Cleopatra may posit some fresh speculation about the ubiquitous monarch, but its glossy presentation errs more towards a superficial toga party than a substantive endeavor." Metacritic assigned Queen Cleopatra a weighted average score of 45 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Anita Singh of The Daily Telegraph gave it 2 out of 5 stars, saying, "It's too soapy for serious history fans, and not enough of a soap for viewers who like juicy historical dramas." The Indian Express writer Rohan Naahar says that "you don't quite get an idea of who Cleopatra was as a person[...] She's projected, funnily enough, as a Beyonce-like figure." Naahar criticized the production design of the show, saying that Queen Cleopatra "[didn't] feature a single archive photograph of the palaces in which she lived, or of her many sculptures, or even paintings of her most famous conquests — both geographical and romantic."

Controversy

Further information: Cleopatra race controversy and Ancient Egyptian race controversy

Cleopatra was played by Adele James in the second season's dramatic reenactment scenes. James is an actress of mixed Jamaican and English ancestry, which caused controversy over the depiction of Cleopatra's race. D.R. Medlen, writing for The Mary Sue, and Marian Makkar, writing for The Conversation, criticized the show for having Colleen Darnell, a white American Egyptologist, as one of the experts, as her vintage cosplay was associated with British colonialism.

The Egyptian government responded to the casting decision negatively. Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities stated that the series represented a "falsification of Egyptian history." The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Archeology through the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities released a statement on the issue, saying that "Queen Cleopatra was light-skinned and (had) Hellenic features." They cited Roman and Ptolemaic Greek coins, statues, and other depictions of Cleopatra as evidence, adding his complaint was "far from any ethnic racism, stressing full respect for African civilizations and for our brothers in the African continent that brings us all together." Former antiquities minister and Egyptologist Zahi Hawass was critical of the second season. He said, "This is completely fake. Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek, meaning that she was light skinned, not black," adding that "Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilisation is black."

Egypt's second oldest and largest newspaper, Al-Ahram states that African Queens demonstrates "Afrocentrist notions [continuing] to influence media perceptions of the past," saying that because African Queens is classified as "historical fact and not [fiction]," and draws from the legacy of Afrocentrist ideas which "came to the forefront in the late 1980s with the pseudohistorical work Black Athena by US writer Martin Bernal," that the show was pseudohistorical in nature. Ioannis Kotoulas, a lecturer of geopolitics at the University of Athens and writer of the article continued, stating that the "Ptolemies performed marriages among themselves for dynastic reasons, so their bloodline was exclusively Greek."

CBS News interviewed Monica Hanna, an Egyptologist, who said, "I am against the film because it is pushing an Afrocentric agenda, regardless of the historical accuracy of whether Cleopatra was Black or White." She compared it to modern European political parties, stating that African Queens "[imposes] the identity politics of the 21st century and [appropriates] the ancient Egyptian past, just as the Eurocentrists and the far-right in Europe are doing." Sara Khorshid, an Egyptian historian, decried the antiblack racism by some Egyptians, but wrote "that a group among those objecting to the Netflix show are using racist language should not detract from legitimate criticisms of the show." Korshid criticized the "Western" and orientalist depiction of Egypt in the show, noting that issues of racism "cannot be resolved by well-meaning American filmmakers simply deciding to cast Cleopatra as Black without involving Egyptians in this decision or the process."

Other responses from Egypt include an Egyptian lawyer who sued to block Netflix in the country, alleging that Netflix was promoting Afrocentrism and attempting to erase Egyptian history. The Egyptian channel, al-Wathaeqya, announced it was producing a documentary about the "true" life of Cleopatra in response to the "revisionism" of the Netflix series. Several evening talk shows on Egyptian television discussed and criticized the series as well. The Russian Embassy in Egypt criticized the documentary on Twitter, calling it "American propaganda" and highlighting what they view as double standards in American media regarding freedom of expression.

Two Egyptians created a petition to cancel the four-episode miniseries on Change.org, which received over 85 thousand signatures in under two days from people around the world. The petition was removed because it “[violated the] community guidelines [of Change.org].” Later on, another petition began widely circulating online to call out Netflix for its falsification of history. The Conversation stressed the production design of the show and its source credibility, commenting on the source material of the show's opening with a story from Classics Professor Shelley Haley saying that "her confidence in Cleopatra’s ethnicity was influenced by her grandmother [telling her], “I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was Black.”

Director Gharavi defended the casting, stating, "Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress," but insisted that "what the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did." Reflecting in an exclusive interview with Variety, she stated "Perhaps, it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as Black, but that I have asked Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they are furious at me for that. I am okay with this." Islam Issa, a scholar and the only Egyptian voice in the documentary, expressed disappointment in Gharavi's politicizing the casting, asking "what right does she have to tell Egyptians how to view themselves?"

Producers of the series stated that "Her ethnicity is not the focus of Queen 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." Later, The Conversation criticized Netflix, saying that the most positive response would be to "[prioritize] its moral obligation of integrity and respect for other cultures over profit."

Adele James questioned the validity of the concept of "blackwashing" and expressed her disappointment with racial perceptions "that people are either so self-loathing or so threatened by Blackness that they feel the need to do that, to separate Egypt from the rest of the continent". James continued her response in a podcast with Steph's Packed Lunch, stating that "[…] And I think it's distressing for anybody to receive any level of abuse, let alone the scale and the nature of what I've received, which is fundamentally racist, all of it." James voiced her concern that criticizers undermined the character, saying "If you watch it is a very small part of the conversation really, this is about the fullness of who this woman was and she was a human being and she shouldn't be reduced to her race any more than I should or anybody should."

External links

• African Queens: Njinga on Netflix
• African Queens: Njinga at IMDb
• Queen Cleopatra on Netflix
• Queen Cleopatra at IMDb

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