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Casting Beth Harmon was a nightmare. She had to be ethereal, alien, and yet achingly vulnerable. Anya Taylor-Joy ( The Witch , Split ) had the enormous eyes and porcelain stillness. But she didn’t know chess.
Hardcover / Coffee Table Book Authors: Various (including series creator Scott Frank, producer William Horberg, and costume designer Gabriele Binder) Pages: ~272 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ (4.5/5)
In the 14-minute making-of documentary Creating The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, Scott Frank explains that they treated chess matches like action sequences, focusing on the players' faces and psychological states rather than just the pieces.
The biggest hurdle in creating the series was the central paradox of chess: the drama is invisible. Director and writer Scott Frank collaborated with production designer Udo Kramer and cinematographer Steven Meizler to solve this.
The answer lies in a 30-year development hell, a director’s obsessive visual grammar, a costume designer working in hyper-saturation, and a lead actor who learned to play chess like a grandmaster. This is the story of creating The Queen’s Gambit .