
“She says that the first thing she noticed wasn’t the pieces, it was the board. “Beth’s a very aesthetic person,” Taylor-Joy notes. But when she comes upon a chess game, her path is clear.
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There’s even a fashion spoiler ahead.īeth is a creature not quite of her 1950s world she barely knows how to engage with others socially. But the lush costumes and luscious settings would simply be window dressing were it not so integral to the story and Beth’s evolution. “But there’s people loving something, and then there’s whatever’s going on right now, which is wonderful and overwhelming and special and all of the words.”īased on the book by Walter Tevis, and adapted by Allan Scott and Scott Frank, who also directed, “Gambit” traces Beth’s journey toward self-acceptance through chess matches - and also shoes, frocks, curtains, jets, hotels and wallpaper, so much glorious wallpaper. Star Anya Taylor-Joy, whose performance as Beth has been acclaimed (and whose first name is pronounced with a hard A, “like aneurysm,” she says cheerfully, clearly accustomed to making that correction), knew the show would strike a chord. The story has proved irresistible “Queen’s Gambit” is Netflix’s most popular scripted limited series to date.

Once she makes it out to the wider world, first through her adoptive parents and then to far-flung chess tournaments, the show’s look goes from dingy to vivid. But during her travails, Beth also stumbles upon her gift: She’s a chess prodigy. Young Beth Harmon is a troubled soul, first living in isolation with a mentally ill mother before winding up at an orphanage that drugs its young inhabitants she fights addiction ever after.

“The Queen’s Gambit” is the story of a most fabulous underdog.
