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.
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.
Anya Taylor-Joy claimed she was able to perform the speed chess games in a single take although she had to repeat the moves for additional coverage.