Former Russian chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili has filed a complaint against the Netflix series “Lady’s Game”, which she accuses of “defamation” and “sexism” against it.
Before triumphing perhaps this Sunday at the Emmy Awards, The Lady’s Game has just been the subject of a complaint. The former chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili has indeed sued the Netflix miniseries, considering herself defamed and the victim of sexism.
80-year-old Nona Gaprindashvili has in fact barely tasted the final episode of the Lady’s game ; a commentator attending the final of the tournament in which the main protagonist Beth Harmon (who – let’s remember – is a fictional character, played by Anya Taylor-Joy), draws a comparison of the two women, claiming that Gaprindashvili became world champion without ever confronting men. Which is entirely wrong.
Believing herself to be the victim of defamation and sexism, the former world champion therefore decided to make her rights heard in court, thus claiming the sum of $ 5 million from Netflix in damages.
“In 1968, the year in which the episode takes place, she faced at least 56 male opponents in chess, including 10 grandmasters, including Dragolyub Velimirovich, Svetozar Gligoric, Paul Keres, Bojan Kurajica, Boris Spassky, Viswanathan Anand and Mikhail Tal “ denounces in particular the document of twenty-five pages filed in the federal court of the Californian court.
In a press release taken up by our colleagues from Deadline, Netflix responded to the complaint: “Netflix has the utmost respect for Ms. Gaprindashvili and her immense career, but we believed this complaint was unfounded and we will defeat ourselves to assert our innocence.” Checkmate ?
