If that’s her goal, then the publicity related to her complaint may have accomplished it. Certainly I wasn’t aware of her prior to this week.
Here’s an article about a real-life female chess player whose life bore many similarities to Elizabeth Harmon’s. I found it in the “Chess is Gendered?” thread.
Given that she’s also an extraordinarily beautiful young woman, the first thing that occurred to me was that she’d have corporate sponsors lined up offering to pay for it. “Say you like Coca Cola and we’ll give you all the money you need!”
This was the plot point that led her to the Magically Amazingly Helpful Negro Friend cliche, which also wasn’t one of the show’s finer moments.
Netflix’s motion to dismiss denied
I think this is a bad ruling that will hurt these types of series and have a chilling effect on art. This was clearly a fictional work. Can the Lincoln family now sue for Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter?
Also, Netflix makes the excellent point that the statement was made in the context of being at the elite Soviet tournament, and at that level no women had competed, so the first Soviet player was dismissing Beth Harmon as not being up to his level of play. So the statement was true in context.
Isn’t it well established that you can’t libel the dead?
Yes. I was trying to be silly, but more to the point, there are all sorts of “based upon actual events” types of shows where people are put in less than flattering positions and now writers will have to either use entirely fictitious names, making the stories less real, or hire a meticulous team of fact checkers, with lawyers in tow, in order not to say the wrong thing.
From the BBC link above:
She has taken issue with a line in the drama where a character claims, falsely, that she “never faced men”.
Lawyers said the error had “tarnished (her) personal and professional reputation” around the world.
Nothing you’ve said changes this. It’s irrelevant whether it was a work of fiction. There was enough factual material in it to cause confusion.
But she had never faced men-----at the level of competition that was the context for the entire statement. Just because she had faced men who were far inferior in stature compared to the giants of the game that were being discussed in the entire portion of the series at issue, I would say that the statement was at minimum “substantially true” but I would go so far as to say true.
What if the only man she had ever played was her brother at Christmas? Still false?
As noted in the complaint the novel mentions her only in passing, but completely accurately. She had by 1968 competed against 10 Russian Grandmasters, including three eventual world champions (these are laid out in detail in her complaint). Apparently she would have been fine with the original wording from the novel and even approached Netflix before suing asking for an apology, but they dismissed her saying the line was “innocuous”.
You can argue she hadn’t played in quite that prestigious of championship that the fictional Harmon had. But you can’t argue she hadn’t competed against the best, because at various points she had.
I think I’d of asked for an public apology as well. And if I hadn’t gotten one like she didn’t, I might well have sued. They really did kinda take a dump on her accomplishments just for the sake of very slightly amping the drama.
As an experienced player at international events (I reached 2390 ELO), I support Gaprindashvili’s claim.
She was well-known in the chess world and there is no need to lie about her achievements.
Interesting - thanks, Andy.
Bumped.
Did you like Beth’s watch?
Late to the party…just watched ep. 1…cant say I’ve ever been invested before in a 9-year old getting her fix without getting caught.
I think i heard the show was praised for costumes and such…but in the ‘and such’ dept…did the prop master just ask for “Old comics” and leave it at that??
There are Star Brand and Vigilante (The 80s ones smartasses) comics on the 60’s comic racks.
Details that nearly noone would notice or care about.
I was thinking about which directors would have the sort of eye for detail to put the correct comic book in that scene, and then I started thinking about what the Queen’s Gambit would look like if it were directed by either Tarantino or Cameron.
I’ll be in my bunk. 
Well Kevin Smith clearly, but he literally owns a comic book store.
But Kevin Smith’s The Queen Gambit is just… The Queen’s Gambit. James Cameron’s TBG would end with Beth in a mechanized crab suit with a 50 mm gun on one hand and a rocket launcher on the other as she takes out misogyny in the chess world in the most direct way possible.
Except with a giant spider. That would be fun.