--- a/mercurial/templatefilters.py	Tue Mar 08 10:58:22 2022 +0100
+++ b/mercurial/templatefilters.py	Mon Feb 21 11:24:57 2022 -0700
@@ -372,9 +372,7 @@
     """Any text. Returns the input text rendered as a sequence of
     XML entities.
     """
-    text = pycompat.unicode(
-        text, pycompat.sysstr(encoding.encoding), r'replace'
-    )
+    text = str(text, pycompat.sysstr(encoding.encoding), r'replace')
     return b''.join([b'&#%d;' % ord(c) for c in text])