Legendary Georgian chess player and five-time world champion Nona Gaprindashvili has filed a lawsuit against Netflix over its hit series - The Queen’s Gambit.
Legendary Georgian chess player Nona Gaprindashvili turns 80
The series is based on a 1983 novel and focuses on the rise of fictional chess player Beth Harmon.
In the final episode Harmon is described as the only female champion who faced men.
The only unusual thing about her (Harmon), 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,” said the series.
In her lawsuit Gaprindashvili says that by 1968, when the episode was set, she had competed against at least 59 male chess players, including 10 grandmasters.
Netflix brazenly and deliberately lied about Gaprindashvili’s achievements for the cheap and cynical purpose of ‘heightening the drama’ by making it appear that its fictional hero had managed to do what no other woman, including Gaprindashvili, had done,” the complaint alleges.
“Piling on an additional insult to injury, Netflix described Gaprindashvili as Russian, despite knowing that she was Georgian, and that Georgians had suffered under Russian domination when part of the Soviet Union, and had been bullied and invaded by Russia thereafter,” the suit says.
Gaprindashvili is demanding five million USD in compensation and the removal of the disputed episodes.
Gaprindashvili is the first woman to be awarded the International Chess Federation title of Grandmaster, which occurred back in 1978.
Source: Agenda.ge