Less than a month after the 2018 publication of Jessica Pressler’s viral New YorkMagazinearticle about fake heiress Anna Delvey, we learned that Shonda Rhimes had nabbed the rights to the story
to produce a new series for Netflix. Anticipation for the show has been feverish ever since, and after a lengthy pandemic delay, Inventing Anna is finally dropping on February 11.
For the uninitiated, Pressler’s article detailed the mind-boggling saga of how Anna Sorokin, a 20-something from working-class Russian roots, scammed her way into some of Manhattan's most exclusive hotels, social circles, and financial institutions by posing as a wealthy German heiress. This faux persona, “Anna Delvey,” was so compelling that it took years for Sorokin's deception to be uncovered. It was only after she began racking up thousands of dollars in unpaid hotel bills and bank loans, and depositing bad checks to tide herself over, that she was arrested. She served nearly four years in prison, and as of February 2022 is awaiting deportation in ICE custody.
ELLE.com visited the Brooklyn set of Inventing Anna back in early March of 2020, just two weeks before the world shut down for COVID. In a development so meta it feels like Rhimes could almost have written it, our interviews with the cast take place on a soundstage that's been transformed into a perfect replica of a WeWork, a once-heralded startup which has just collapsed in spectacular fashion. The location is just one 0f many nods the show makes to the specific cultural moment in which Delvey pulled off her con.
Here are eight things to know about the series, courtesy of behind-the-scenes interviews with actors Julia Garner, Anna Chlumsky, Katie Lowes, Laverne Cox, and Alexis Floyd.
1 | The series is a character study of a con artist, but also of the people who fall for the con.
As the title suggests, Inventing Anna explores the carefully constructed personality that is “Anna Delvey,” but also the marks she surrounds herself with. As depicted by Garner, Anna is charming, unpredictable, dazzlingly over-confident, and completely unencumbered by anxiety, self-doubt, or shame. It’s easy to see why that combination of traits would spell success in New York City.
“There’s a certain type of personality that is like that. I mean, look at politicians, they're all like that, and you have to be like that in order to get far,” Garner points out. “I think the difference with Anna is that she did have a good idea, and she was funny and charming and fun to hang out with, and I think that’s why people fell for it. There was something to fall for. But she just couldn’t provide what she said she was going to provide. She was digging herself in a hole, and her response was like ‘Well, I’ve got the shovel and I’m just gonna keep digging!’”
But the show is equally interested in the people who got sucked into Anna’s orbit. One is Rachel DeLoache Williams, the Vanity Fair photo editor who famously ended up with a $60,000 charge on her company card after Delvey failed to pay the bill at a luxury Moroccan resort. Williams has since shared her story in a book, My Friend Anna: The True Story of the Fake Heiress Who Conned Me and Half of New York City, which has been reportedly optioned by HBO and Lena Dunham for an upcoming series.
“Rachel is very triggering to people,” Scandal alumnus Katie Lowes, who plays Williams, says with a laugh when I bring her up. “When I talked to people about the story before signing on, some were major fans of Rachel and the decisions she made, and some people are not.” Publicity materials for Inventing Anna tease that Rachel, who’s initially depicted as deeply naive, may turn out to be Anna’s greatest creation.
“I think Rachel really grew up in this experience, and she learned from Anna how to work the system,” Lowes says of this line. “After watching how Anna worked, I think she was like ‘Okay, I’m gonna watch out for myself, and myself only. And how many people can I sell this to and make money?’ I think she was a good girl, and grew up thinking that the right thing to do was to put others first, and for better or worse through this experience, she started to put herself first.”
2 | Inventing Anna is told from the perspective of a journalist who’s loosely based on Jessica Pressler.
Where most of the real life players go by their actual names in the series, Anna Chlumsky’s journalist is pointedly named Vivian, not Jessica—and she works at “Manhattan Magazine,” a stand-in for New York.
“I would say I’m one of the more fictionalized versions of the real characters,” confirms Chlumsky. As Pressler did in real life, Vivian visits Delvey several times during her incarceration at Rikers Island, and develops a complex relationship with her subject. Like Pressler, Vivian is pregnant through much of the writing of the story, and is trying to rebuild her career after publishing a piece that almost ended it. The latter experience gives her insight into the people who fell for Anna.
“Vivian has this whole story before we even meet her when she was really brought to task about falling for a fraud,” Chlusmky continues. “So I think she wishes she had a better nose for dishonesty, she wishes she had a more cynical view of human beings than maybe she innately does. I think she uses her work to make sense of the world for herself, and when she finds herself emotionally invested in the subjects of her pieces, she resents it a little.”
3 | The show explores what goes into creating the appearance of wealth.
As depicted in the show, Anna is sometimes charming and sometimes ruthlessly dismissive, throwing out casual jibes about people’s clothes, weight and professional accomplishments, and eager to dismiss anyone she deems “basic.” That tactlessness is part of her superpower, part of what allows her to be perceived as elite.
“She’s so rude, but people love that!” Lowes points out. “At the hottest restaurant in NYC, the host or hostess is so mean. My roommate in college was the host at Pastis for years, when Pastis was the spot, and she was coached and trained into being so fucking rude. The attitude was very detached, very uninterested, like, ‘What’s your name? No. We don’t have room for you.’ And people are into it. That’s very Anna Delvey.”
4 | Not all of Anna’s friendships are depicted as hollow.
Specifically her bond with hotel concierge Neffatari “Neff” Davis (Alexis Floyd), though initially transactional, is written as a genuine connection. Working at SoHo boutique hotel 11 Howard (where Delvey lived for many months and ultimately ran up a $30,000 unpaid bill), Neff is used to slipping into whatever role her rich guests require.
“You’re a therapist, you’re a personal assistant, you’re a chameleon,” Floyd says. “You’re making miracles happen and sensing what people’s needs are, and making it look effortless, and making yourself invisible, in a way.” But unlike most of the hotel’s guests, Anna doesn’t look straight through Neff, and instead befriends her and shares her access with her.
“Neff is always opening these doors for other people, getting other people into these elite spaces, this other New York. Anna was one of the first people who held the door open for her, and invited her in, and learned her name, and saw Neff as someone with dreams of her own. I think that was a foreign concept in Neff’s world. Finally having access to these privileges that she’s always having to hand off to people who don’t take the time to thank her for it. That was a life-changing moment.”
5 | Anna’s white privilege is also explored through her friendship with Neff.
Anna Delvey is alleged to be many things: a master manipulator, a genius with a photographic memory, a charismatic sociopath. But one thing she is definitely is a white woman, which was a huge factor in how she got away with her con for as long as she did.
“Neff couldn’t have gotten one or two steps into this plan!” Floyd exclaims when I bring this up. “Walking into a hotel and not putting down a credit card? No way. Every time I walk into a hotel, eyes are on me from the moment I walk in. There’s an assumption that I’m not supposed to be here, you know? It’s a totally different world that Neff lives in."
The privileges that allowed Anna to scam her way through New York’s party scene are explored in subtle ways throughout the show. “Accessibility has so much to do with the skin you’re in,” Floyd says. “A big reason why Anna got away with what she did was because she could walk the walk, and talk the talk. She was an incredible performer, but it’s also about these visual cues that run our world, that tell you if someone’s valuable, if they’re worth your time, if they can do anything for you.”
6 | Anna’s Instagram is almost a character of its own.
As she obsessively documents her luxe lifestyle through selfies and snaps, Anna’s Instagram drives the plot at times, but also reveals hints about how she relates to herself and her calculated persona.
In playing Delvey, Garner was deeply conscious about the ways social media has commodified people’s relationships. “You hear someone be like ‘I hate that girl so much,’ and then literally an hour later, they’ll upload a photo with that person with a caption like, ‘My best gal pal!’ Social media is great in a lot of ways, but a lot of the time people are lying, because they don’t want to face themselves. I think that’s really what the show’s about.”
7 | In delving into startup culture, the show will touch on other scam stories like the Fyre Festival and Theranos.
The summer of 2018 was memorably dubbed “the summer of scam” thanks to the publication of both Pressler’s article about Anna Delvey, and John Carreyou’s book Bad Blood, an exposé on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. In writing Inventing Anna, Rhimes and her staff acknowledge the bigger cultural moment that created Delvey, and the Silicon Valley flavor of magical thinking that made her plans seem feasible. Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland even shows up on screen as a friend of Delvey's, and his public demise foreshadows her own downfall.
“It’s on the brain for a lot of reasons,” Chlumsky says. “I think startup culture really confused people about what’s concrete and what’s not. People use words like ‘We’re pre-revenue right now’, and it’s just like…okay, that means you’re broke! I feel like the last 20 years has produced this sense that nothing is real, and we can all get by with our ideas and our dreams.”
“When I read about Anna falsifying bank records to obtain a loan, I thought about Michael Cohen’s testimony.”
My day on set, like the show itself, takes place at a time when Donald Trump is still president, and his financial crimes are dominating headlines. “When I read about Anna falsifying bank records to obtain a loan, I thought about Michael Cohen’s testimony,” Laverne Cox (who plays Kacy Dukes) notes, pointing out that Trump’s alleged crimes are closely aligned with Anna Delvey’s. “I think it feels like the ultimate zeitgeist moment to me, that we can have a president of the United States who’s allegedly done something very similar to Anna, but has not faced any consequences when Anna’s sitting in jail. And all those bankers from Wall Street who scammed our system and caused our economic downturn with all the predatory lending, none of them are in jail either. You can see how a potential grifter looks at this, and they’re like okay, well, where’s my hustle?”
8 | Anna’s infamous court style will play a major role in the show.
Never one to pass up a photo op, the real Anna Delvey capitalized on the publicity around her 2019 trial by showing up in a series of impeccable designer outfits. Naturally, they were chronicled on a dedicated Insta, Anna Delvey Court Looks, and this surreal development gets all the focus it deserves on screen.
“Anna was, for a long time, trying to be something that she’s not, and when she finally got caught, she doubled down,” Garner says of what that headline-grabbing wardrobe represents. “She’s kind of making her grand entrance in the courtroom. It’s her way of saying: Yeah, my birth certificate might say I’m Anna Sorokin, but me? I’m Anna Delvey. You can take it or leave it.”
