First female chess grandmaster sues Netflix over Queen’s Gambit

Published September 17, 2021 11:55pm ET



The first female chess grandmaster, Nona Gaprindashvili, sued Netflix for millions of dollars in damages on Thursday for a line in The Queen’s Gambit that she claims was untrue and sexist.

The lawsuit filed in federal district court in Los Angeles refers to a scene in the final episode of the series, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a fictional American chess prodigy in the Soviet era named Beth Harmon, in which a commentator at a Moscow tournament said she was a female world champion who “has never faced men.” Gaprindashvili, now 80, took the assertion as a personal affront.

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