I’m not that superstitious but I believe in certain curses. I will never, ever, ever, say the name of The Scottish Play, and definitely not in a theater. (Somebody said it once in my acting class and the power went out instantaneously. Just saying.) And I believe that any movie project related to Cleopatra is totally cursed. I have good reason to believe that. The 1963 Elizabeth Taylor movie is legendary for nearly bankrupting 20th Century Fox, and it was plagued with production problems–they switched directors halfway through and had to do months of re-shoots. It also gave us the Romance of The Century in Liz and Richard Burton’s torrid affair, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.
Fast forward from the dying days of the old studio system, to 2014 and North Korea’s hacking of the Sony database. One of the things that came out in that data breach: Angelina Jolie was hoping to work with director David Fincher on another Cleopatra movie, with Angelina playing Cleopatra. She had already been attached to the project for years. She was facing push back from the top brass at Sony about the direction she wanted to take and the producer Scott Rudin said some juvenile, snotty things behind her back via email. In 2017, we learned that the project was going ahead with Denis Villeneuve as a director, but no one knew if Angelina was still involved. That Sony project is still languishing in development hell as far as I know.
Three years after *that* in 2020 Gal Gadot was cast as Cleopatra in a different project with a different director. Originally Patty Jenkins was in talks to direct but now someone else is attached, Kari Skogland, who is a TV director who worked on series like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and The Americans. IMDB says it’s in pre-production but Gal Gadot was asked about it during an interview with Vogue Hong Kong to promote her Netflix movie Heart of Stone. She was asked what she did to prepare for playing the character and if she approached Cleopatra differently from other roles. It sounds like she wants to downplay what Cleopatra is best known for, and bring the focus to her political power–which is interesting because that’s what Angelina Jolie wanted to do, too.
How she prepared for the role: Israel borders Egypt, and I grew up with so many stories about Cleopatra, and she’s like a household name. You know, if Wonder Woman is the imaginary strong female leader, Cleopatra’s actually the real one. That’s a perfect example of a story that I wanted to tell because I started reading different books about Cleopatra, and I said, Wow, that’s fascinating. All I ever saw in regards to Cleopatra from film, was that she was this seductive woman who had an affair with Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. But the truth is, there’s so much more to her. This woman was so ahead of her time. Egypt and what Egypt was back then, was still futuristic to where we are today. I can’t say much. But to me, I’m so passionate to tell her story and to bring justice to this character, and her legacy and celebrate her and her legacy. We have a beautiful script, and I cannot wait to share this story with the world and change the narrative of Cleopatra simply being a seductor.
I’m glad that Gal is serious about making Cleopatra a multifaceted character. She was more than a seductress–she was a political strategist, But I’m not sure she has the acting chops. I liked her as Wonder Woman but her job in Wonder Woman was to play someone uncomplicated and one-dimensional. That’s what Wonder Woman and Superman are, in my view. They’re good, pure in heart, and courageous, and that’s basically it. There’s not a lot of nuance to them. They exist to be an antidote to an increasingly anxious, complicated, and violent world. (There’s probably some WWII/Cold War stuff in there too based on when the characters were created but I know very little about comic books, Marvel, or DC). So all that Gal had to do was play someone with a child’s uncomplicated and unyielding sense of right and wrong and I think she did that well. But a queen who is employing numerous strategies and tactics, including seduction, to maintain her hold on power? Gathering political allies and then kind of ghosting them when they ask for military aid, fighting wars with her brother, poisoning her other brother, executing her half-sister…Miss Woman was chaotic and morally complicated. I don’t think Gal can carry that off, she just isn’t that strong of an actress. I actually think Angelina would have been better, purely on an acting level, at playing Cleopatra: Politician and Ruler Who Is Charming But Also Kills Her Family.
Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, Leo Franco/Backgrid, Avalon
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