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The Queen’s Gambit starring Anya Taylor-Joy has been a smash hit for Netflix since its release last year.

It will go into the upcoming 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards this weekend as a favourite, after winning a leading nine trophies at the Creative Emmys last weekend.

Based on Walter Tevi’s 1983 novel, The Queen’s Gambit chronicles the rise of a young orphan girl, as she forges her own path into the higher echelons of competitive chess, a predominantly male-dominated world.

To really drive home how groundbreaking the achievements of Taylor-Joy’s fictional character Beth Harmon were, the End Game finale of the show includes this line:

“The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex, and even that’s not unique in Russia,” a commentator quips as Harmon plays in a white-knuckle match in Moscow.

“There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men.”

With that, it is Nona Gaprindashvili’s move.

She is suing Netflix for $5 million in a defamation lawsuit over this “sexist” and incorrect line.

Image: en.chessbase.com

Per Deadline, the defamation suit filed in federal court by California lawyers for Gaprindashvili makes the truth clear:

“Gaprindashvili is a pioneer of women’s chess and a much-loved icon in her native country of Georgia. Throughout her extraordinary career, she won many championships, beat some of the best male chess players in the world, and was the first woman in history to achieve the status of international chess grandmaster among men.”

…“The allegation that Gaprindashvili ‘has never faced men’ is manifestly false, as well as being grossly sexist and belittling,” Gaprindashvili’s 25-page complaint adds.

The lawsuit argues that in 1968, the year in which the episode is set, she had competed against at least 59 male chess players.

10 of those were Grandmasters, and three had been world champions at various stages during their careers.

The real kicker comes in via a statement from attorneys with Rufus-Isaacs Acland & Grantham LLP:

“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.”

“Thus, in a story that was supposed to inspire women by showing a young woman competing with men at the highest levels of world chess, Netflix humiliated the one real woman trail blazer who had actually faced and defeated men on the world stage in the same era.”

I don’t know much about chess, but that looks like an absolute checkmate.

In response, Netflix said it has respect for Gaprindashvili but will “vigorously defend the case”.

We’ll end off with Gaprindashvili herself, doing what she does best:

[source:deadline]