Israeli actress Noa Cohen, who stars as the female lead in Netflix’s new biblical film about the mother of Jesus, titled “Mary,” reports that she faced death threats from anti-Israel protesters who opposed her casting. The budding 22-year-old actress, however, is brushing off the backlash. 

Ms. Cohen discussed the controversy over her breakout role during a conversation with the Associated Press on Tuesday. While Ms. Cohen said that she “expected” negativity on social media, she maintains that the production team selected her, an Israeli, because they wanted “to stay as authentic as possible.” 

“And I am a Jewish woman, who’s playing a Jewish woman. I grew up in Israel, which is modern day Judea, which is where Mary grew up. So I feel very, very comfortable portraying her and I did that from a place of true sincerity in my heart.”

Even if people aren’t keen on her portrayal of Mary, she said, “I like this role very much and I’m very, very proud of it.” 

The movie, which follows the story of Mary of Nazareth from her childhood to the birth of Jesus, also features several other Israeli actors, including Ori Pfeffer, Mili Avital, Keren Tzur, and Hilla Vidor. The film, however, has faced a barrage of attacks from anti-Israel protesters who accuse the network of erasing Palestinian history by casting a Jewish Israeli woman to play the part of Mary, who they claim was Palestinian. 

The backlash grew so strong that Ms. Cohen received numerous death threats while shooting the film in Morocco last year, she told  Israel’s Channel 12 this week. She recounted receiving threatening messages from social media users in Morocco who claimed to know which hotel she was staying at. “That didn’t make me feel the safest in the world,” she said, reflecting that Morocco is “after all, a Muslim country.” 

The antisemitic vitriol surged after Netflix released its first trailer in November, with many calling to boycott the film. “Mary was Palestinian. Now she’s going to be played by a settler from a state that is trying to wipe Palestine out of existence,” one user, who goes by the handle @AdameMedia, and boasts more than 200,000 followers, shared on X. Some left even more overtly antisemitic comments, with one user writing: “A disgusting Jew got the part. Lol.” Their comment, which they left under Netflix’s post releasing the trailer, received more than a thousand likes. 

Historians and peace activists, however, were quick to come to the filmmakers’ defense, pointing to the fact that Mary’s Jewish identity is well documented. “Mary was Jewish. Jesus was also Jewish. Jesus was born in Judea,” a journalist and antisemitism researcher, David Collier, wrote on X, telling the anti-Israel crowd to “stop rewriting history.” He added that those who “have a problem with this — or try arguing that these people were Palestinians (when Palestine did not exist)” don’t have a problem “with Israel” but are “simply an antisemite.” 

Ms. Cohen’s nationality is actually what drew the film’s director, D.J. Caruso, to hire her. Back in October, he told Entertainment Weekly that “It was important to us that Mary, along with most of our primary cast, be selected from Israel to ensure authenticity.” 

Debate over Mary and Jesus’s Jewish identities recently made its way to Vatican City after Pope Francis was pictured in December celebrating the unveiling of a nativity scene that appeared to present Jesus as a Palestinian. The display, which was gifted to the Vatican by Palestinian officials associated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, featured a wooden sculpture of baby Jesus lying atop a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headdress. By the next day, however, baby Jesus and his Keffiyah-wrapped manger had been removed.