Nyet! Netflix Loses Move To Get $5M ‘Queen’s Gambit’ Suit Tossed; Soviet-Era Chess Champ Claims Defamation
06.09.2022 - 23:45
/ deadline.com
UPDATED with settlement, 1:25 PM: Netflix has settled the $5 million lawsuit filed against the streamer over its hit limited The Queen’s Gambit. Terms of the settlement reached today weren’t announced.
The suit was filed by Soviet chess icon Nona Gaprindashvili, who alleged sexism and historical inaccuracy in the series starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon. In the final episode, as Harmon plays in a stress-fueled 1968 match in Moscow against a male challenger, a commentator says, “There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.”
Read details of the case below.
PREVIOUSLY, January 27: Netflix’s stock is rising again after a rough week, but the streamer took a hit Thursday in court over The Queen’s Gambit.
A federal judge denied the streamer’s desire to see dismissed Soviet chess icon Nona Gaprindashvili’s $5 million seeking complaint of sexism and historical inaccuracy against the multiple Emmy-winning limited series.
“Netflix does not cite, and the Court is not aware, of any cases precluding defamation claims for the portrayal of real persons in otherwise fictional works,” wrote U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips in a ruling revealed today (read it here). “The fact that the Series was a fictional work does not insulate Netflix from liability for defamation if all the elements of defamation are otherwise present.”
Smashing through gender barriers at the highest level of chess back in the 1960s, Georgia-born (country, not the U.S. state) Gaprindashvili has objected to a line in the limited series’ final episode, “End Game,” that put her real-life accomplishments up against Anya Taylor-Joy’s fictional prodigy Beth Harmon. “The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex,