Nona Gaprindashvili, a legendary Georgian chess player, is rumored to have filed a $5 million defamation case against Netflix for an episode of The Queen’s Gambit.
According to Deadline’s report on the slander case involving the chess legend:
“The assertion that Gaprindashvili “had never met a man” is plainly false, sexist, and insulting.”
Netflix filed an appeal in an effort to get the charges dropped, stating that The Queen’s Gambit is a work of fiction and that the series’ authors should have creative freedom.
The company also asserted that the content was protected by the First Amendment, but U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips dismissed this argument.
According to Deadline, judge Virginia A. Phillips penned:
“The fact that the Series was a fictional work does not exclude Netflix from defamation liability if all defamatory components are present.”
As previously reported, the chess legend has requested a trial by jury, and that may be the end of the matter. The streaming service, however, did not comment on the decision.
Nona Gaprindashvili, the first female Grandmaster in the world
Nona Gaprindashvili, who is 80 years old and living in Tbilisi, Georgia, is a chess grandmaster. In 1978, she was the first woman to receive the prestigious Grandmaster title from the International Chess Federation.
She was the sixth women’s World Chess Champion from 1962 to 1978. She won five consecutive Women’s Soviet Championships, in 1964, 1973, 1981, 1983, and 1985.
In 1968, when this episode of The Queen’s Gambit is set, Gaprindashvili had played against approximately 59 male chess players.
The list includes at least ten Grandmasters from that era, including Dragolyub Velimirovich, Paul Keres, Svetozar Gligoric, Bojan Kurajica, Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, and a few others.
In response to a section in The Queen’s Gambit that stated Nona had never faced a male opponent, a lawsuit was filed.
The Netflix limited series premiered in October 2020, and approximately 62 million households watched it in the first month.
In the final episode of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, a pundit observes, “Her s*x is basically the only thing that distinguishes her, and even that is not uncommon in Russia.”
In 1968, Beth Harmon makes this statement during a grueling match against a male opponent in Moscow.
The announcer says,
“There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced a man.”
The story is mostly based on Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel The Queen’s Gambit, which makes no mention of her never having encountered males.
The book states,
“There was Nona Gaprindashvili, who was not quite to the level of this competition, but who had faced all of these Russian Grandmasters many times before.”
The Georgia chess champion objected to a statement in the series’ last episode, “End Game,” that linked her real-life achievements to Anya Taylor’s portrayal of Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit.
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