A cool duel between Netflix and 1970s Georgian chess champion Nona Gafrindashvili, who says she was defamed in the episode. queen’s playIt ended up in a dead end. The two parties informed the court on Monday that they had reached an agreement.
The Emmy-winning series, based on the 1983 novel of the same name, follows orphan Beth Harmon (Anna Taylor-Joy) as she rises to the top of the chess world. The show culminates as Harmon faces Russia’s best players in a famous chess tournament in the 1960s.
But Gaprindashvili objected to the fictional chess commentator’s line at the end of the series, for which he blamed him. Says a commenter on Harmon: “The only thing unusual about him, really, is his sex. And this is not unique to Russia. There is Nona Gafrindashvili, but she is a women’s world champion and has never met men.
In his lawsuit, Gafrindashvili claimed that the claim that he “has never dated men” is “blatantly false, as well as blatantly sexist and demeaning”. He said that in 1968, when the episode takes place, he had competed against at least 59 male chess players, at least 10 of whom were grandmasters.
“Netflix has blatantly and deliberately lied about Gafrindashvili’s achievements for the cheap and cynical purpose of ‘force drama’ to show that her fictional character has achieved something that no other woman, including Gafrindashvili, has achieved,” the complaint reads. “So in a story that was supposed to inspire women and show a young woman competing against men at the highest level of world chess, Netflix played down a true female Blazer who actually met and defeated men in the world of chess. same game”. era.”
The settlements come after a federal judge declined to hear the case in January.
In bringing Gafrindashvili’s lawsuit under California’s anti-SLAPP law, Netflix argued that viewers understood the line to be false because “works of fiction are under no obligation to be true.”
US District Judge Virginia Phillips rejected the argument that streamers cannot be prosecuted for defaming real people in works of fiction. Netflix was found to have acted with a “reckless disregard” for the truth, noting that the show mentioned Gafrindashvili’s name and depicted real people and events. He wrote: “Not only does this bridge the gap between associating a supposedly fictional character with a real person, regardless of whether viewers knew the complainant’s name (as indeed some did), viewers could reasonably believe the comment was one of those historical ones. . ” Details are included in the series. ”
Netflix appealed the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which agreed to hear the case through to conclusion.
Gafrindashvili’s representative Aleksandre Rufus-Isaaks spoke about this the hollywood reporter“I’m glad this issue has been resolved.
Netflix and its lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The decision in this fight comes after another mature fight. In August, Rachel Williams, a New Yorker of beloved Anna Sorokin, sued the network for defamation for her portrayal. ana’s invention.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
