Every Fresh Face From Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit Cast

The Queen's Gambit isn't your typical series about a chess prodigy. The Netflix show opens in 1967 with main character Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) scrambling from her presumed one-night stand and popping a green pill for... a chess match. Yes, you read that right.

Adapted from the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit focuses on Beth, an orphan from Kentucky who accidentally discovers at a young age she's a chess prodigy. As she gets older and fine-tunes her skills, she's hungry for wins — and for the tranquilisers she became addicted to during her time in the orphanage. The series, much like the book, explores themes of hunger for success, feminism, and loneliness as Beth makes friends, gains new family members, and meets rivals over the course of her chess career.

The cast boasts some unexpected and familiar faces, including Taylor-Joy, from Autumn de Wilde's recent Emma adaptation, to some newer names we'll surely all be familiar sooner than later, such as Moses Ingram.

Click through to see who is in The Queen's Gambit before you call checkmate.