CAIRO, Egypt (TND) — A lawyer in Egypt has reportedly filed a lawsuit over Netflix's depiction of famous Egyptian ruler Queen Cleopatra as a Black woman in a new season of a docudrama series.

Mahmoud al-Semary accused the streaming service of "erasing the Egyptian identity" of Cleopatra in a legal complaint submitted to Egypt's public prosecutor on Sunday, according to local news agencies. The backlash comes after Netflix released a trailer for the docudrama series' new season last week.

Most of what Netflix platform displays do not conform to Islamic and societal values and principles, especially Egyptian ones," Mahmoud al-Semary reportedly said in the complaint.

The Egyptian lawyer also alleged that content in the new season of Netflix's docudrama series violated the nation's media laws, and that the streaming giant was trying to "promote the Afrocentric thinking... which includes slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity."

Mahmoud al-Semary is reportedly requesting for Netflix to be shut down in Egypt along with legal action against the streaming company for its alleged offenses.

The new season of the documentary "African Queens" is a four-part series from executive producer Jada Pinkett Smith that "shows a side of the infamous royal you haven't seen before," according to Netflix's companion website Tudum. It premieres on May 10.

Actress Adele James, who is biracial, is set to play Cleopatra. Tudum says that the casting is a "creative choice" that is "a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler’s race."

During the time of her reign, Egypt’s population was multicultural and multiracial. Cleopatra’s race was unlikely to be documented, and the identities of her mother and paternal grandparents weren’t known," Netflix's official complain site says. "Some speculate she was a native Egyptian woman while others say she was Greek."

Sally Ann Ashton, an expert who is reportedly interviewed in the Netflix docudrama series, is quoted as saying that "given that Cleopatra represents herself as an Egyptian, it seems strange to insist on depicting her as wholly European."

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who is also the wife of actor Will Smith, told Tudum that she "really wanted to represent Black women" with her docudrama series.

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!" Pinkett Smith reportedly said. "The sad part is that we don’t have ready access to these historical women who were so powerful and were the backbones of African nations."

But critics apparently agree with Mahmoud al-Semary, and contest that Netflix's depiction of Cleopatra as a Black woman is wrong or "fake."

Prominent Egyptologist Zahi Hawass reportedly told the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper that "Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was light-skinned, not black." Egypt's only rulers who were known to have been Black were the Kushite kings, who ruled from 747-656 B.C.

This is completely fake," Hawass reportedly said while calling on Egyptians to stand against Netflix. "Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilization is Black."

Now, the director for Queen Cleopatra's new Netflix series is pushing back, claiming "it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did."

In an article she wrote that was published by Variety, Tina Gharavi says she wondered if she could "find the answers" about the famous Egyptian queen's ancestry that would "release her from the stranglehold that Hollywood had placed on her image."

She also admits that she realized how much of a "political act" casting a Black woman as Cleopatra would be when she was researching the queen.

Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?" Gharavi asks in her article "Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter."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," Gharavi adds.

Gharavi admits that "we don’t know for sure" if Cleopatra was Black, but "we need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with."

Most of all, we need to realize that Cleopatra’s story is less about her than it is about who we are," Gharavi claims.

Queen Cleopatra ascended to her throne following the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. She was famously a lover of legendary Roman statesman and general Julius Caesar, and later the wife of Mark Antony. She and Mark Antony committed suicide together after the Roman armies of Octavian defeated them. Octavian later became Emperor Augustus, and Egypt fell under Roman rule for a time.

Cleopatra actively influenced Roman politics at a crucial period, and she came to represent, as did no other woman of antiquity, the prototype of the romantic femme fatale," Encyclopedia Britannica says.

The identity of Cleopatra's mother is unknown, according to the BBC, which adds that historians believe it's possible the queen has indigenous Egyptian or African ancestry.

ncG1vNJzZmivmpawtcKNnKamZ56axLR7zZqroqeeYsSwvsudZp6fqaXBqq3NZqOar6mav26%2F1J6qZqaVqbOttddmnaiqXZmysbXCraCnn12mwqaxzWaapZ2fpa61vsBmmKxlkqGupLeMppihpZ%2BqsW6ty2aqnqWRp8ZurcWroJyZnmK%2BtrHEp6pmopGZrm68yKeinqykYsCutdOh