TORONTO -- An Israeli actress famous for playing “Wonder Woman” has stirred fresh controversy announcing her plans to portray Egyptian queen Cleopatra on screen, a casting choice some critics have dubbed “tone deaf.”
Gal Gadot, who was born to Israeli parents with the original surname “Greenstein,” tweeted Sunday that she has teamed with “Wonder Woman” director Patty Jenkins “to bring the story of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, to the big screen in a way she’s never been seen before.”
“We hope women and girls all around the world, who aspire to tell stories will never give up on their dreams and will make their voices heard, by and for other women,” the actress, who is credited as a producer and writer for the film, wrote online.
Some Twitter users were quick to criticize the casting choice, some calling it “tone deaf” and pointing out that Cleopatra was an African ruler and thus should be played by a person of colour.
“The casting of Gal Gadot is just another stroke in the long history of white-washing and the legacy of colonial Egyptology that strives to sever all connections between Egyptians (widely defined) and the history of their land,” wrote one Twitter user.
Cleopatra’s skin colour has long been a topic of discussion and debate in research and online, though her ancestry is known to be Greek with some Persian and Syrian, according to scholars. Though researchers are uncertain of her mother’s identity, her father was Ptolemy XII Auletes, a king of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian Greek royal family.
It’s not the first time this year that the “Wonder Woman” actress has been implicated in a “tone deaf” controversy online. In March, Gadot helped recruit fellow celebrities to produce a group cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” as a kind of “we’re all in this together” inspirational video in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was swiftly ridiculed for being cringe-worthy and unhelpful. In a new Vanity Fair cover story, Gadot said she “had nothing but good intentions.”
Regarding her intentions for the upcoming Cleopatra project, Gadot tweeted that she wanted to bring the ruler’s story to the screen in a new way: “To tell her story for the first time through women's eyes, both behind and in front of the camera.”
