African Queens

Summary

The docudrama 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 Njinga

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 Caesar

James Marlowe as Octavian

Andira Crichlow as Arsinoe

Episodes

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 critics' 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, 18% of 17 critics' 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."

Cleopatra was played by the English actress Adele James, who is of Jamaican and English descent, in the second season's dramatic reenactment scenes. The choice to cast a Black actress caused controversy due to the controversy over Cleopatra's race.

The Egyptian government responded negatively to the casting decision. 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, claiming 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." 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."

On May 9, 2023, CBS News interviewed Monica Hanna, an Egyptologist, who expressed her discontent with the film because "it is pushing an Afrocentric agenda ... imposing the identity politics of the 21st century and appropriating the ancient Egyptian past, just as the Eurocentrists and the far-right in Europe are doing". She further added that ancient Egypt "was more of a culture than it was a race."