Jewish readers were up in arms with Casandra character in Candice Carty-Williams' hit book - so will she be toned down on screen?
November 3, 2022 13:45
Auditions are only just taking place but new Channel 4 drama Queenie has already walked into an antisemitism row.
The series is being adapted by Candice Carty-Williams from her own award-winning novel of the same name.
Described as a “black Bridget Jones”, it is in many ways a far messier tale. In a nutshell, the protagonist, Queenie, tries to navigate both sexual and racial politics and ends up in a very unhappy place.
It became particularly popular in the wake of the murder of George Floyd when everyone — excuse my cynicism — was reading books about the black experience. It is a clever, thought-provoking and occasionally hilarious book. But from the start, Jews raised concerns about one of the characters.
Candice Carty-Williams' book Queenie
Cassandra is rich and spoilt, prone to narcissism and likes to psychoanalyse her friends. She also lends her poorer friends money but keeps a tab. Did I mention she’s Jewish?
Cassandra’s “Jewish Princess” attitude and wealth are constantly compared to Queenie’s poverty in the book, implicitly undermining Jewish claims to be a minority.
This did not go down well. After all, Jewish wealth, whether real or imagined, has never protected us from hatred or genocide.
When one writer remonstrated with Candice on Twitter, he was attacked for being racist and misogynistic and even having a fetish for black women.
“I felt totally gaslit and then legions of her followers joined in. I got accused of being racist and things got very personal very quickly simply for pointing out the antisemitism,” he tells me.
He wasn’t the only one. But everyone who pointed out the problems with the Cassandra character appeared to be ignored.
Actress Tracy-Ann Oberman questioned the TV script on Twitter, saying, “Promoting these tropes hurt my heart so much.” Candice replied that concerns about antisemitism had been taken into account in the screen adaptation and wrote, “Cassandra being a bad friend has nothing to do with her heritage.”
Channel 4 told me: “We are currently developing the scripts for the series ahead of the start of filming and key to that process is ensuring that, as with all the stories we tell on screen, Queenie echoes Channel 4’s commitment to improving representation, championing anti-racism and tackling antisemitism.”
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