Marielle Heller: 'I don't think we have to be jerks to make good art'

The writer-director, currently starring in The Queen's Gambit, has no truck with the idea of tortured genius

It's 2pm on polling day in Connecticut and Marielle Heller is hunkering down to await the result of the US election with her family, after venturing out to cast her vote. No, it wasn't very busy, she says over Zoom, but it's a small town and I wore two masks". We briefly ponder the nail-biting hours that lie between our conversation and publication of this article. It would be a good time for a few games of chess, except that Heller isn't interested in chess. I feel like I should pretend that I am. My kid has started learning how to play and was taking classes before the quarantine began. But yeah, my five-year-old knows more about chess than me," she says.

This is an endearingly unguarded declaration from a woman who has returned to acting, after the best part of a decade behind the camera, for a Netflix series that is all about the rise of a chess prodigy. For the record, I'm not interested in chess either, but despite its dogged pursuit of the perfect opening, I found The Queen's Gambit compelling, not least because of Heller's performance as Alma, the adoptive mother of a fiery young girl whose extraordinary gift takes her from a Kentucky orphanage to the top of the world rankings.