Israeli actress Noa Cohen defended the decision to cast her as Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, in a new Netflix movie and also admitted she was not surprised about the social media uproar regarding the casting.

“I expected it but you know what, I feel like DJ [Caruso, the director], our producer, and the rest of the team did the best they could to stay as authentic as possible and they just wanted to find the right person and the right cast for the job,” Cohen told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “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.”

“People don’t have to like it, but I like this role very much and I’m very, very proud of it,” she concluded.

Netflix released the official trailer for “Mary” in November and began streaming the film on Dec. 6. The coming-of-age drama, which additionally stars two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins as King Herod, tells the story of the birth of Christ. Besides Cohen, “Mary” also stars four other Israeli actors — Ido Tako, who plays Cohen’s husband Joseph; Ori Pfeffer; Hilla Vidor; and Mili Avital. The film was shot in Morocco and American Pastor Joel Osteen served as an executive producer on the film. Netflix said filmmakers “consulted with a wide range of religious scholars and leaders to capture the story’s historical elements.”

After the trailer for “Mary” premiered, pro-Palestinian activists on social media quickly lambasted the filmmakers and called for a boycott of the film because an Israeli Jewish actress was cast to play the lead role. They falsely claimed that Mary and Joseph were Palestinian, and that Jesus was also Palestinian or “a Palestinian Jew.” The Palestinian media outlet Quds Media Network also related the film to the “ongoing genocide of Christians in Palestine.”

Cohen shared in an interview on Tuesday night that she received multiple death threats while filming the Netflix project in Morocco last year.

“I got messages from Moroccan profiles [on social media] who said they know ‘what hotel you’re staying at,’” she told the Keshet 12 Israeli television program “Good Evening With Guy Pines,” according to The Jerusalem Post. “That didn’t make me feel the safest in the world. And you go to film in what is, after all, a Muslim country, Morocco … and you need a special visa to get in, and you have to have heavy security guarding you at all times.”

“It was scary. Some people began to understand that I was in Morocco and I got messages on Instagram, I got threats, the feeling wasn’t always the most comfortable,” Cohen added. She also said that once the trailer was released, “it was amazing to see how the responses started with ‘Zionist,’ then went to ‘Israeli,’ and finally ended up with straight-up ‘Jew … you Jewish whore’ — excuse the language. It was amazing to see how much of it was pure antisemitism and not anything else.”

Caruso previously praised Cohen’s performance in the film, saying that she “navigates the complexities of Mary’s journey so extraordinarily that every time I watch the film, she blows me away.”

“She beautifully captures Mary’s innocence, pain, joy, grace, and fierce perseverance in a captivating way,” he added.

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