A former chess world champion's $5 million lawsuit against Netflix will go ahead after he claimed he was defamed in an episode of The Queen's Gambit, a Los Angeles judge has ruled.
Chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili, 80, filed a lawsuit in September claiming that a line from the series in which a character claims she "never encountered men" in her career was "extremely sexist and vulnerable. " Was.
Gaprindashvili had faced dozens of male contestants by 1968, the year in which the wildly popular limited series The Queen's Gambit was set in the lead.
Netflix's lawyers tried to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the series is a work of fiction and therefore covered by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects free speech.
But Federal Judge Virginia Phillips rejected his motion Thursday, noting that "the fact that the series was a fictional work does not separate Netflix from liability for defamation if all elements of defamation are otherwise present." "
The Queen's Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, is based on the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis and tells the story of a young orphan who becomes the world's greatest chess player.
While the central character Beth Harmon is fictional, the series features several real-life chess characters, including Gaprindashvili.
Gaprindashvili was the first woman to be awarded the title of Grandmaster of the International Chess Federation in 1978. - AFP