Check your facts, chess champion tells Netflix as she sues for $5m
‘This was an insulting experience. This is my life that has been crossed out, as though it is not important’
THE world’s first female chess grandmaster is suing the makers of the hit Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit for $5 million (£3.6 million) over a claim she never faced male opponents.
Nona Gaprindashvili, a revered figure of Soviet chess, filed a defamation lawsuit in Los Angeles this week against the streaming platform over a line in the series which her lawyers say is false and sexist.
The 80-year old, a hero in her native Republic of Georgia, was described in the final episode as a female champion who had “never faced men”.
“The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex, and even that’s not unique in Russia,” the announcer in the show intones. “There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.”
The suit filed on Ms Gaprindashvili’s behalf in federal court said the reference “degrad(ed) her accomplishments before an audience of many millions”.
The legal papers said the five-times world champion was “the first woman in history to achieve the status of international chess grandmaster among men”.
Ms Gaprindashvili, who began playing professionally at 13, had competed against at least 59 male chess players by 1968, the year in which the episode was set, according to the legal papers.
Ms Gaprindashvili later became a female world champion and the first woman in history to be awarded the rank of grandmaster after a tournament in Lone Pine, California, in 1977.
The lawsuit alleges that 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”.
In a recent interview, Ms Gaprindashvili said: “They were trying to do this fictional character who was blazing the trail for other women, when in reality I had already blazed the trail and inspired generations. That’s the irony.”
Netflix said it greatly respected Ms Gaprindashvili but believed her claim was without merit.
The Queen’s Gambit tells the story of Beth Harmon, an orphan who becomes the world’s best chess player in the Cold War era. She is described by Netflix as “determined to conquer the traditional boundaries established in the maledominated world of competitive chess”. The series won two Golden Globes and received 18 nominations in the Primetime Emmy Awards.
Ms Gaprindashvili’s lawyers say the series, released in October 2020, caused her professional harm and want the line about her never facing men removed, calling it “grossly sexist and belittling”. They point out that the hit show was viewed in more than 62million households in its first month.
“This was an insulting experience,” Ms Gaprindashvili said. “This is my entire life that has been crossed out, as though it is not important.”