What really struck me about The Queen's Gambit was that it wasn't at all about chess. It's not about a game. It's about the cost of genius.

It's a story about how you survive in a world when you have a very specific gift that makes you harder to understand.

I think she looks to chess as very much an escape.

Although it tells that story about a child genius working up to a world level, it's actually still more about her demons.

This character is, you know, essentially, her own antagonist, and I was fascinated. I'd never read a character like this. Somebody who is so brilliant and so self-destructive, and in a world that she was already kind of not a part of.

Tevis was writing with an understanding of the next century, almost.

She's so centered in how intelligent she is that she doesn't necessarily think of herself as a woman first, and I do think that there is something so that, because you're experiencing the '60s through her in the way that she just automatically assumes that she is equal.

The overriding interest I've always had is to make it powerfully emotional.

Anybody who's dealing with problems of addiction is their own worst enemy. She keeps self-destructing along the way.

'everything is falling apart. And you looked up to me, and now I have to carry that shame.'

She's also addicted to winning. She's addicted to feeling like she is in control.

Chess is the one thing she feels like she can control, that, on that board, she's in charge. Whenever she's moving those pieces around, she's at home.

Beth is very obsessive, full stop. Like, I think that is just something that is intrinsic to her.

His reassurance kind of makes her feel a bit more calm. But I do think that she's juggling a very fine line of, like, "Am I insane or am I a genius?"

You can reach for your best, but it only really matters if other people see it as well.

So it was our target to repeat but make it different.

She experienced that searching for cool is difficult because that cool doesn't exist. And her search for cool is, actually, her search for herself.

It's not physical loneliness that she's suffering from. It's an emtional and intellectual one.

Having the opportunity to spend time with Beth in this way, and not just see all of the wins, but all of the hard work with the sacrifices that it takes to get to the wins. I think, hopefully, that just builds a lot of empathy for somebody who I, selfishly, really, really care about.