TORONTO -- An Israeli actress famous for playing âWonder Womanâ has stirred fresh controversy announcing her plans to portray Egyptian queen Cleopatra on screen, a casting choice some critics have dubbed âtone deaf.â
Gal Gadot, who was born to Israeli parents with the original surname âGreenstein,â tweeted Sunday that she has teamed with âWonder Womanâ director Patty Jenkins âto bring the story of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, to the big screen in a way sheâs never been seen before.â
âWe 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,â the actress, who is credited as a for the film, wrote online.
Some Twitter users were quick to criticize the casting choice, some calling it ââ and pointing out that Cleopatra was an African ruler and thus should be played by a person of colour.
âThe 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,â .
Cleopatraâs 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 motherâs identity, her father was Ptolemy XII Auletes, a king of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian Greek royal family.
Itâs not the first time this year that the âWonder Womanâ actress has been implicated in a âtone deafâ controversy online. In March, Gadot helped recruit fellow celebrities to produce a group cover of John Lennonâs âImagineâ as a kind of âweâre all in this togetherâ 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 âhad .â
Regarding her intentions for the upcoming Cleopatra project, Gadot tweeted that she wanted to bring the rulerâs story to the screen in a new way: âTo tell her story for the first time through , both behind and in front of the camera.â