16 things you probably didn't know about 'The Queen's Gambit'

Born in San Francisco in 1928, Tevis was older by the time he wrote "The Queen's Gambit," and as a result, some aspects of the protagonist's story were drawn directly from his own experiences.

According to David Hill's reporting for The Ringer, Tevis learned to play chess at 7 years old, but he wasn't a prodigy and didn't go on to compete professionally until he was an adult. Although he never ascended to Beth's level, he still appreciated the intricacies of the game.

Tevis also spent time in a convalescent home as a child due to medical complications, during which time his parents effectively abandoned him.

Carers at that facility regularly drugged him with phenobarbital three times a day, and Tevis credited this early experience with drugs as a precursor to the alcoholism he developed as an adult — a parallel that is clear in the book.

Like Beth, Tevis spent much of his childhood in Lexington, Kentucky. As Hill reported for The Ringer, before Tevis became seriously interested in chess, he was obsessed with pool — he watched hustlers compete for big money and learned to play the game himself.

He eventually wrote a short story that he later expanded into a novel, which inspired the namesake film, "The Hustler" (1961).

Other books Tevis later wrote were adapted into movies including "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and "The Color of Money," which was a sequel to "The Hustler."

Much of the book relied on the advice of noted chess instructor Bruce Pandolfini, so creator Scott Frank brought both Pandolfini and Kasparov on board as consultants. At one point, Kasparov was even invited to play the character Vasily Borgov.

In a November interview with Slate, Kasparov said that several of Tevis' game descriptions were a bit "amateurish," so he made sure they were properly translated to the screen.

"So I said, 'I will talk to Bruce, we'll pick up the key games," he said. "I will collect some games and I will basically slightly upgrade them — change them to make sure that those are real games that will look exactly as described in the book.'"

On top of facilitating those adjustments, he also provided invaluable insights into Soviet chess culture that further added to the realism of the series.

In the same Slate interview, grand master Kasparov likened Beth's story to a "female version" of the real-life American grand master Bobby Fischer's life.

Fischer died in 2008 at the age of 64. In his obituary, The New York Times described his playing style with words that could also fit Beth's particular flair: "volatile," "dramatic," "difficult," and "brilliant."

In October, Frank told Entertainment Weekly that although chess consultants created each game you see on screen, the actors memorized and played every match — even the speed rounds.

"You can freeze-frame anything, and it's a real chess setup," Frank said. "There's even a whole sequence where you never see the board, but they're still actually moving the pieces where they're supposed to. The actors always knew exactly where every piece was supposed to go."

According to Atlas of Wonders, several of the show's iconic settings were filmed in Berlin, Germany, from the Methuen Home Orphanage to the beautiful French hotel.

Additionally, the pivotal bridge, the Ohio US Championship campus, and Beth's house were all locations in Ontario, Canada.

Taylor-Joy told NPR in 2020 that she's not a runner, not for any reason.

Nevertheless, she said that she finished reading "The Queen's Gambit" book in about an hour and was so thrilled about the role that she ran to meet with Frank to talk about it.

"It's still the only job that I've ever physically run to," she said. "I was so excited."

The actress gained massive acclaim for her role in the 2015 horror movie "The Witch."

She has also appeared in "Split" (2016), "Glass" (2019), and "Emma." (2020) as well as on the series "Peaky Blinders."

Actor Harry Melling, who plays Harry on "The Queen's Gambit," also portrayed Dudley Dursley in five of the eight Harry Potter movies.

You may also recognize him from his more recent roles on the BBC One series "His Dark Materials" based on the books by Philip Pullman and in the 2020 Netflix films "The Old Guard" and "Devil All the Time."

Actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster played Newt in the "Maze Runner" film series and Jojen Reed on "Game of Thrones," both adaptations of books by James Dashner and George R. R. Martin, respectively.

But way back in 2003, he also played Sam in the instant holiday classic "Love, Actually," a role he reprised in 2017 for the UK's charity short called "Red Nose Day Actually."

According to reporting by Jennifer Bisset for CNET, Hungarian player Judit Polgár became the youngest chess grand master in history at just 15 years old in 1991. She refused to play in women's tournaments, instead going up against and beating the best male chess players of her time.

Before she ascended to those heights, her older sister, Susan Polgár, fought for the right for women to qualify in the World Chess Championship in 1986.

Until that point, the word "men's" had been in the name of the event, but she worked to replace that title with "open" and base the tournament's eligibility on skill rather than gender.

Chess players might not have the handy visual aid of a dedicated special-effects team, but current world champion Magnus Carlsen told Chess24 that professionals looking away from the board to remember moves is "pretty normal."

Carlsen became a grand master at 13 years old, was going up against the best players in the world by 16, and gained his first world championship title at 22.

In 2020, he is the current reigning world champion, having defended his title three times.

Although expert chess consultants trained the actors and kept the moves realistic, it was Tesoro's job to keep telling Beth's story through the games.

She told Vulture in October that she kept switching the camera's focus to varying things during different matches, like the ticking clocks or the player's hands, to fit the games into the overall arc of Beth's story.

During the Paris tournament where Beth is clearly hungover, the pieces move around the board in a way that Tesoro described as being like a "Gumby" effect, a reference to the famous green clay character.

The Independent reported that prior to his death in 2008, Ledger had been working on a film adaptation of "The Queen's Gambit," which he was planning to direct and star in alongside Ellen Page, who would've played Beth.

Screenwriter Allan Shiach, who writes under the pen name Allan Scott, had been working with Ledger on this adaptation, and he said Ledger resonated with Tevis' novel and was also an incredibly gifted chess champion who was close to becoming a grand master.

Binder specifically chose to use plenty of checkered patterns throughout the series, which marries Beth's passions for chess and fashion. She told Vogue UK in November that there are also various homages to designers of the era, such as André Courrèges.

According to Binder, Beth's all-white final outfit on the finale unmistakably shows Beth in control as the white queen.

"At the end, Beth wears the white coat with the white pants and cap," Binder said. "The idea, of course, is to convey that she is now the queen on the chessboard and the chessboard itself is the world."

According to Deadline, 62 million households had watched the seven-episode series in its entirety. It ranked in Netflix's top 10 in 92 countries and reached number one in 63.

Deadline also reported the show seemed to make the game more popular.

They reported a spike in eBay searches for chess sets, a doubled number of Google searches on the topic, and a five-fold increase of players on Chess.com.

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