Russian Chess Legend Suing Netflix Over “Queen’s Gambit” Line
Soviet-era chess legend Nona Gaprindashvili has sued Netflix over “The Queen’s Gambit” series, claiming a line in the show’s finale was “grossly sexist and belittling.”
“The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex, and even that’s not unique in Russia,” an announcer of a chess tournament in the show’s finale episode says, as the camera pans to a woman watching the match. “There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.”
Well the real Gaprindashvili is an 80-year-old who was the first woman to be named a grandmaster, and she DID compete against dozens of men throughout her career. In fact, by 1968, the year the fictional episode was set, Gaprindashvili had “competed against at least 59 male chess players (28 of them simultaneously in one game), including at least ten Grandmasters of that time,” according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Federal District Court in Los Angeles.
Gaprindashvili’s suit says the line was a “devastating falsehood, undermining and degrading her accomplishments before an audience of many millions.”
