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Nona Gaprindashvili, chess champion, sued Netflix for defamation in ‘Queen’s Gambit’

Nona Gaprindashvili, a chess icon and the fifth woman to win the world championship in the 1970s, filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix, claiming it was misinterpreted in the hit series Lady’s Gambit.

The case concerns a sequence in the final chapter where Gaprindashvili, who is now 80 years old, is said to have never played in men’s chess competitions. The lawsuit claims that in 1968, the year the episode occurred, Gaprindashvili had faced at least 59 players.

Netflix has deliberately lied about Gaprindashvili’s accomplishments with the cynical and cheap purpose of heightening the drama by showing that her fictional character had managed to do what no other woman, including Gaprindashvili, had ever accomplished before. The claim that Gaprindashvili had never faced men is flatly false, plus it is disgustingly sexist and disparaging.

The lawsuit, filed last Thursday in a Los Angeles federal district court, seeks to clarify the story and secure $ 5 million as compensation for damages, as the events shown in the series have detracted from Gaprindashvili’s achievements. .

Nona Gaprindashvili

Another erroneous detail mentioned in the lawsuit is that Lady’s Gambit It shows her as a Russian woman, when she was actually born in Zugdidi, Georgia. Along with the lawsuit, Gaprindashvili agreed to be interviewed by the New York Times.

They tried to make this fictional character like a trailblazer who would inspire other women, when in fact, I had already done it and had inspired entire generations. That is the irony.

My whole life has been denied, as if it were not something important.

Nona Gaprindashvili y Beth Harmon

Gaprindashvili started playing chess as a teenager and won his first world championship at the age of 21. Furthermore, in 1963 he managed to win the Hastings Challengers tournament, which was mainly dominated by men, and defeated all the British masters during the next edition of the same tournament.

As if that were not enough, in 1978 she was the first woman to be titled International Grandmaster by the International Chess Federation.

Beth Harmon

Based on the 1983 novel, written by Walter Tevis, Lady’s Gambit focuses on a chess player named Beth Harmon, who was played by Anya Taylor-Joy. The series was launched last year and has been one of the biggest successes of Netflix, who, for its part, declared that the lawsuit is pointless.

We have the greatest respect for Ms. Gaprindashvili and her illustrious career, but we believe this claim is without merit and we will vigorously defend the case.

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