Angelina Jolie, 43, has been “in on-off talks for months with studio bosses at Sony” to play Cleopatra in a new movie, reports The Daily Star. She faces some stiff competition from Lady Gaga, 32, as she’s “now also in the running” following her successful showing in A Star Is Born. “Cleopatra was known as the Queen of the Nile, and Elizabeth Taylor firmly established herself as Hollywood’s queen in the 1963 film version,” a senior production source at Sony told The Daily Star. “There’s every reason to think that whoever gets to play her this time around is going to enjoy an equally lofty perch in the motion picture industry.”
It’s a perch that fans want to see occupied by people other than Angelina and Lady Gaga. When Twitter got word of these two starlets being considered to play the queen of Egypt – which, is in Africa – some said that the role should go to a black woman. “Don’t NOBODY wanna watch a white Cleopatra. How about a real queen like Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira (Okoye), Jada Pinkett-Smith, Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington? Real women of color. In those days Egypt was in N. Africa. Wasn’t no pale-skinned people in that region,” tweeted @ShesSeauxKewl. “I’m not sorry to tell y’all but @rihanna definitely has that role owned! Gaga and AJ shouldn’t even be in the running. Honestly, if a black woman ain’t playing Cleopatra, then NOBODY should play the AFRICAN EGYPTIAN QUEEN CLEOPATRA! PERIOD!” added @MrNickMcGowan.
However, some have pointed out that to be historically accurate, the role should go to a Greek woman. “There’s a lot to get annoyed within Hollywood’s casting practices but … despite being [a] queen of Egypt, Cleopatra was of Greek descent. The Ptolemaic dynasty was Greek,” tweeted @AdamSerwer. It’s true. Egypt’s Alexandria-based rulers, including Cleopatra, “were ethnically Greek,” according to Smithsonian.com, as they were “descended from Alexander the Great’s general Ptolemy I Soter. They would have spoken Greek and observed Greek customs, separating themselves from the ethnically Egyptian majority. But unlike her forebears, Cleopatra actually bothered to learn the Egyptian language.
So the discussion of #Cleopatra's blackness is laughable considering that her family, although Greek on her daddy's side, had been in Egypt for at least 5 generations. With little to no mention of her mother it's safe to conclude that she was (a deeply-pigmented) Egyptian. pic.twitter.com/3E2X5lNBeb
— 👑 Stephanie Victoria 👑 (@CrownVictoria22) January 14, 2019
Tired: Movies about Cleopatra
Tireder: White actresses fighting over the role of Cleopatra in said movie
Wired: Literally any other Queen in the world preferable a WoC pic.twitter.com/lNotlBLaVt
— Valerie Complex♓️♎️♋️ (@ValerieComplex) January 14, 2019
Three things to note: first, 1963’s Cleopatra, despite being the highest-grossing film of the year, actually lost money because it was so expensive to make. Secondly, accuracy might not be an issue for this film, as The Daily Star claims Sony’s flick is a “dirty, bloody political thriller told from a feminist perspective.” The fictional elements mean that anyone from Taraji to Rihanna could play the part. Third, take this report with a grain of salt, as The Daily Star was also the publication that claimed Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson trashed “generation snowflake,” but the former WWE star came out to say that “the interview never took place, never happened, never said any of those words, completely untrue, 100% fabricated.”