Emma Stone is also acting in that Nathan Fielder chess movie

[Update June 6 12:00 P.M.]: IndieWire has since walked back their reporting that Emma Stone will be acting in Checkmate. Their story has been updated to say that Stone will only be producing the film through her Fruit Tree banner.

It’s not very often that a throwaway line in a piece that’s otherwise about something entirely different becomes a headline in its own right. In this case, an IndieWire piece where Benny Safdie discusses the finale of The Curse apparently broke the news that Emma Stone will not only produce but star in Nathan Fielder’s feature directorial debut, Checkmate. It was previously announced that A24 had won a bidding war for the rights to Ben Mezrich’s book proposal about a high-profile chess-cheating scandal and brought The Curse stars on board behind the scenes, but this is the first we’ve heard that Stone is also going to appear in the movie.

Checkmate follows the scandal surrounding 19-year-old chess grandmaster Hans Niemann defeating the older and more experienced World Champion Magnus Carlsen at a 2022 tournament. Carlsen subsequently withdrew from the tournament and implied that his opponent had cheated. (Niemann had admitted to previously cheating in an online match on Chess.com, but denied ever doing so in an in-person game.) Theories abounded as to how Niemann could have accomplished such a nefarious feat, but one Reddit joke that the young player used anal beads to cheat took off and cracked the mainstream Internet. Never mind that a Chess.com report “found no determinative evidence that he has cheated in any in-person games,” the world came to know the situation as chess’ anal beads scandal.

It’s unclear where Stone would fit as an actor in this story. Depending on how many creative liberties Fielder takes to fictionalize the real-life scandal, she could end up as one of the chess players. Perhaps there’s a good supporting role for her off the chessboard. Perhaps, as is the case with Julio Torres’ Fantasmas (which Stone also produces), she’ll only appear in a brief cameo to give the film some prestige shine. Regardless, it’s a tale that suits the taste of both herself and Fielder; much like The Curse, it’s absurd but also surprisingly high stakes. The question is, would it be more absurd for Fielder to depict the main character actually using anal beads to cheat, or that such a rumor gained traction in the first place? In the wake of the real scandal, Niemann was offered to play chess naked for a cam site to prove own innocence. Actually following through on the offer sounds exactly like what a Nathan Fielder protagonist might do.