The Queen's Gambit was a viewership boon for Netflix, but now the streaming giant is facing a lawsuit over the show for comments made about Georgian Chessmaster Nona Gaprindashvili.
A complaint was filed with the United States District Court Central District of California, Western Division by Gaprindashvili against Netflix for false light invasion of privacy and defamation. The suit was spawned by comments made in the final episode of The Queen's Gambit, in which a commentator says, "There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men. My guess is Laev was expecting an easy win, and not at all the 27-move thrashing Beth Harmon just gave him."
As the suit states, "Gaprindashvili is a pioneer of women's chess and a much-loved icon in her native country of Georgia. Throughout her extraordinary career, she won many championships, beat some of the best male chess players in the world, and was the first woman in history to achieve the status of international chess grandmaster among men."
According to Gaprindashvilli, she had competed against nearly 60 men at the time of that episode's 1968 setting. "Netflix brazenly and deliberately lied about Gaprindashvili’s achievements for the cheap and cynical purpose of 'heightening the drama' by making it appear that its fictional hero had managed to do what no other woman, including Gaprindashvili, had done," the suit reads. It further adds that "the allegation that Gaprindashvili 'has never faced men' is manifestly false, as well as being grossly sexist and belittling." Gaprindashvili also took issue with The Queen's Gambit depicting her as Russian, even though she's from Georgia, which "suffered under Russian domination when part of the Soviet Union, and had been bullied and invaded by Russia thereafter."
Based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy who rises to the top of the male-dominated chess world in the 1950s and '60s. Shortly after its debut in 2020, Netflix confirmed it'd been watched by over 62 million households, making it the streaming service's biggest scripted miniseries to date. "It’s a true testament to [creator Scott Frank's] skill as a writer and filmmaker that he was able to bring the drama and detail of the many chess matches to life on camera," Netflix VP of Original Series Peter Friedlander said.
Source: THR
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