Ukrainian Chess Player Was Offered a Role in Netflix's The Queen's Gambit
He was considered for the role of Vasily Borgov, a Russian grandmaster.
Ukrainian chess player Vasyl Ivanchuk, world champion in blitz and rapid chess, was offered a role in the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit. He said this in an interview with Radio Svoboda.
Ivanchuk was considered for one of the series' key characters, Russian grandmaster Vasily Borgov, who meets the main character Beth Harmon across a chessboard in the final episode.
Vasyl Ivanchuk
Ukrainian chess playerI received an email saying there was such an offer to play the role of Borgov. I didn't reply right away. I wondered whether it was some kind of scam or someone's joke. I found out that the company was reputable and that such a film was indeed being prepared. Then I wrote back: what exactly are you offering? I needed to know more or less the scope of the work. About a week may have passed between when I received the letter and when I replied. And they answered: sorry, we have already found another actor for this role.
The chess player added that this role would not have been comfortable for him: “If I were to choose a character I would have played, it would be the janitor who taught a little girl to play.”
Garry Kasparov, world chess champion and consultant to the series' creators, said that the final game of the series was based on a real chess match: the 1993 game between Ivanchuk and American Patrick Wolff. That game ended in a draw.
The Queen's Gambit premiered on Netflix at the end of October. Today it is considered one of the most popular series on the streaming service: in 28 days, it was watched by 62 million accounts. The series set a record for viewing numbers in such a short time.
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