Research of Drs. Heywood & Thornton in Netflix series by Jada Pickett Smith
Premiering February 15th, Netflix’s new series Queens of Africa: Njinga “traces the rise and reign of Queen Njinga of Angola amid family betrayal and political rivalries.” Created by Jada Pickett Smith, this series follows a show on Cleopatra from last year.
The film is based on Dr. Linda Heywood’s book Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen. Attentive watchers will see that in fact every scene in the movie is based on an equivalent section Heywood’s book. Dr. John Thornton worked with a group within production company Nutopia called “the factuals” whose job it was to fact-check the film to insure its historical accuracy. In doing this, he and Dr. Heywood supplied the factuals with hundreds of translated pages of original documents, illustrations, and suggestions.