Checkmate! The Queen's Gambit wins Outstanding Limited Series at 2021 Emmys
The Queen's Gambit paid off.
The Netflix chess drama won Outstanding Limited Series at the 73rd annual Emmys Sunday night. It was the show's 11th Emmy win this year, including Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, which long-winded director Scott Frank won earlier this evening.
"The one thing that no algorithm can predict, that no billion-dollar budget can manufacture is word of mouth," said executive producer William Horberg during his acceptance speech. "This award is for the fans who told their friends, and who became fans who tell their friends, 'Dude, you gotta watch the orphan girl chess drama.'"
He added, "Anya Taylor-Joy, what can I say? You brought the sexy back to chess, and you inspired a whole generation of girls and young women to realize that patriarchy simply has no defense against our queens."
PHIL BRAY/NETFLIX Anya Taylor-Joy in 'The Queen's Gambit'
One of the breakout series of the pandemic last year, The Queen's Gambit is an adaptation of Walter Tevis' 1983 novel and starred Joy as Beth Harmon, an orphan with a prodigious talent for chess. The seven-episode story followed Beth as she fought her way up through the male-dominated world of chess, and was Netflix's most-watched miniseries to date, according to the streamer.
"She's the character that I've had the least amount of skin between," Taylor-Joy told EW about playing Beth. "I understood her so immediately, and she came forth to me so quickly that it was like, this is slightly harder to handle because it means that when Beth has a bad day, I will have a bad day. And I have to learn how to say, 'Okay, this is not mine, this is the character's.'"
The Queen's Gambit beat out WandaVision, I May Destroy You, The Underground Railroad, and Mare of Easttown.
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