It took writer and producer Allan Scott about thirty years to get this show into production. During that time, he rewrote the story nine times and approached several studios. Each studio rejected the show, as they believed that nobody would be interested in chess. Ironically, this show became the most viewed show on Netflix, attracting over 62 million viewers worldwide within a month after its debut.
Unlike a majority of movies and television shows depicting chess boards, the chess boards are always set up correctly in this series and the chess games and positions are realistic. National Master Bruce Pandolfini and Grandmaster Garry Kasparov acted as consultants for this series.
In autumn 2020, multiple news outlets (including the New York Times, NPR, FOX Business, CNN, Forbes, Variety, and many others) reported that due to the popularity of this series, sales of chess sets had skyrocketed and interest in learning the game had greatly increased.
During an October 2020 interview with National Public Radio's Scott Simon on "Weekend Edition Saturday," showrunner Scott Frank said that he first asked grandmaster Garry Kasparov to play the role of Borgov, which Kasparov refused. He did agree to serve as a consultant on the show. Frank said that aside from the obvious advice that Kasparov provided on designing the chess games during the tournaments, he also contributed valuable "insight into how a chess prodigy might feel. And there's a lot of conversation in the story that comes straight from him--the Russians discussing how she can't lose because if she lost, you know, she's an orphan. She's like us. What would she have?"
In an interview, Anya Taylor-Joy (Beth Harmon) said that before taking the role, her level of chess knowledge was "0, none." She went on to say that throughout the filming of the series, she was "invited into a very secret world..." "it was so exciting to be able to have the pressure of 'you have to learn this very complicated sequence, over 3 boards, as quick as you can in 5 minutes'..." "it's up there with the proudest I've ever been of something that my brain was able to do because I tricked myself into believing I was a really good chess player." Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Benny Watts) and Harry Melling (Harry Beltik) also admitted that they knew very little about the game prior to filming.