Netflix‘s latest limited series “The Queen’s Gambit” is a show about tragedy, trauma, and self-doubt, on top of being about a chess prodigy. Turns out, there is a longer story behind the show, including the fact that Heath Ledger was trying to make the story of Beth Harmon into his directorial debut right before he died in 2008.
As The Independent reported in 2008 following the passing of Heath Ledger, screenwriter Allan Shiach was working with Ledger on a film adaptation of Walter Tevis‘ 1983 novel “The Queen’s Gambit.” Ledger was reportedly looking to make this his directorial debut, and to direct Ellen Page as Harmon.
“He was passionate about it; he was an intense, interested young man and I was drawn to him immediately,” Shiach said of Ledger at the time. “We spoke and spoke about the project over the phone, and then eventually got round to meeting up over it towards the end of last year.”
Ledger reportedly had aspirations to become a film director, and he did direct music videos for several artists like Ben Harper and N’fa. At a press conference at the Venice Film Festival in 2007, Ledger expressed interest in directing a documentary about the English-born singer/songwriter Nick Drake, and he even made a video for a song by Drake that reportedly only screened twice, and ends with a character played by Ledger drowning himself in a bathtub.
Following Ledger’s death, the project was shelved, until Scott Frank teamed up with Schiach to expand the story into a seven-part miniseries that is now available on Netflix. In his review of the first season of “The Queen’s Gambit,” our own Brian Tallerico wrote “With production values that compare with anything on television this year, a performance at the center that never falters, and the kind of rich storytelling more common to literature than television, this is one of the most consistently entertaining and impressive shows of 2020.”