Last year’s Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit hit all the right notes. For the neophytes, it was quirky and intriguing. For those already smitten with the game, it was a rare joy to see that chess-wise, they mostly got the details right. Mostly.
One awkward exception was the portrayal of Nona Gaprindashvili, the contemporary women’s World Champion, who held the title from 1962 to 1978. Now 80, she is suing Netflix, claiming false light invasion of privacy and defamation and seeking damages of ‘at least $5 million’.
The point of controversy occurs in the final episode, when the heroine Beth Harmon is playing at an elite tournament in Moscow. The commentator intones: ‘The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex. And even that’s not unique in Russia. There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.’
Never faced men? The original novel by Walter Tevis (to which the Netflix script is generally faithful) states no such thing: ‘There was Nona Gaprindashvili, not up to the level of this tournament, but a player who had met all these Russian Grandmasters many times before.’
This is what is written in the court papers: ‘The allegation that Gaprindashvili “has never faced men” is manifestly false, as well as being grossly sexist and belittling. By 1968, the year in which this episode is set, she had competed against at least 59 male chess players (28 of them simultaneously in one game), including at least ten Grandmasters of that time, including Dragoljub Velimirovic, Svetozar Gligoric, Paul Keres, Bojan Kurajica, Boris Spassky, Viswanathan Anand and Mikhail Tal.’
The gist is correct, though if I were suing Netflix, I would be more punctilious with the facts.
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