The Queen’s Gambit: A Real-Life Chess Champion on Netflix’s Addictive Hit

Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. women’s chess champion, tells Vanity Fair how accurate the series is in terms of women in the sport, addiction, and rock star prodigies.

¿Es realista Gambito de Dama?

BY JULIE MILLER

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

When Jennifer Shahade heard that Netflix was adapting Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel The Queen’s Gambit as a miniseries, she wasn’t particularly worried that the miniseries would be as technically accurate as Tevis’s book. The two-time U.S. women’s chess champion serves as the U.S. Chess Federation’s women’s program director, and she knew the series would help draw females to the male-dominated sport either way. 

“I’m not super sensitive [about accuracy]—like, ‘Oh, my God, are they going to do it wrong?’” Shahade told Vanity Fair this week. “With chess, I think the more exposure, the better. It always tends to be presented in a very positive light—as a symbol of intellectualism and the power of the mind.”