Seen ‘Inventing Anna’? Here’s what it gets right (and wrong)

By Emily Palmer

The new Netflix series Inventing Anna, about con artist Anna Sorokin, better known as Anna Delvey, includes a playful disclaimer that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. “This whole story is completely true,” it reads. “Except for all the parts that are totally made up.”

But does the second half of the disclaimer refer to the stories Sorokin told her high-society marks? Or does it describe the story we see onscreen — the one behind Sorokin’s stories?

The answer, in short, is both: As Sorokin and the show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal), would likely agree, there’s no sense in letting facts get in the way of a good tale.

Over Sorokin’s monthlong trial, which I covered in 2019 for The New York Times, evidence showed she stole a private jet and bilked banks, hotels and associates out of about $200,000. She did all of this while attempting to secure a $25 million loan from a hedge fund to create an exclusive arts club. Swindling her way into a life of luxury, Sorokin deceived Manhattan’s elite into believing she was a German heiress worth 60 million euros.

In reality, she had no real wealth, college degree or business experience. She wasn’t even German.

“The thing is, I’m not sorry,” she told me at the Rikers Island jail complex, in New York City, the day after a judge sentenced her to 4 to 12 years behind bars for charges including second-degree grand larceny, theft of services and one count of first-degree attempted grand larceny. She added: “I regret the way I went about certain things.”

Inspired by a 2018 New York magazine article by Jessica Pressler (a producer of the series), Inventing Anna tells the story of Sorokin’s climb through the uppermost circles of New York City art, finance and fashion — and of her ultimate fall from grace. The series, all nine episodes of which debuted Friday, is the first show Rhimes has created for Netflix herself, and in true Shondaland tradition, the show luxuriates in a soapy mix of sex, power and intrigue.

It also, per tradition, puts ambitious and complex women at its center. Sorokin, played by Julia Garner (Ozark, The Assistant), is just one of them — and not the only one who is ethically challenged. The story’s engine is Pressler’s fictional proxy, Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), whose pursuit of the story becomes all consuming.

But how true to life is this telling? I took a look at what the series gets right and wrong, drawing from my own experience and research, which included conversations with Sorokin’s lawyer, Todd Spodek, and friend Neff Davis, and a series of recent phone interviews with Sorokin. (A few minor details here are based solely on Sorokin’s word, so given her history, use your own judgment.) She has served her minimum sentence and is now being held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a corrections facility in Goshen, New York. (She is facing deportation but has appealed the order.)

Turns out the truth is sometimes better than fiction.

The journalism

For a show that includes a reporter among its producers, the writers pay little attention to what true or at least ethical reporting looks like.

Yes, office politics can influence decisions and relationships within publications, as in most workplaces. And yes, good reporting can include flattering and even befriending sources only to air their dirty laundry. But the series hinges on a moment when Vivian convinces Anna to forgo a generous plea deal and go to trial against the advice of her lawyer, all so Vivian can score a career-redeeming article. In the real world — or at least in the journalism world — that could have been the story’s biggest scandal.

In the series, Vivian is a disgraced journalist at the fictional Manhattan magazine who is looking for a big break. (She has been banished by her editors to Scriberia, the part of her newsroom where old writers are put out to pasture.) Seeing Anna’s story as her shot at redemption, Vivian curries Anna’s favour by bringing underwear to her at Rikers; by helping catalog evidence (“Let me be part of the team!” she says, also unethical); and by loaning Anna a white dress to wear during closing arguments, the better to project an image of innocence.

Portions of this are somewhat rooted in reality. Pressler came under scrutiny after reporting a fake claim in 2014 that a high school senior had made $72 million on the stock market. (New York magazine apologized for the article.) But by the time she met Sorokin in 2018, the writer had already bounced back at the magazine, publishing a December 2015 cover story about strippers who stole from “(mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting men.” That became the caper film Hustlers (2019), starring Jennifer Lopez.

But Sorokin said Pressler did not bring her underwear; according to Spodek, she also did not help catalog evidence. Sorokin confirmed that the decision to go to trial was her own — and made against the advice of confidants. As for the white dress, Sorokin wore it during jury deliberations. By the time the guilty verdict came in, she had switched to black. (Pressler declined to comment for this article.)

The ‘VIP’ treatment at Rikers

I’ve often interviewed inmates like Anna at Rikers and other jails, and the scenes of taking that Q100 bus offer a pretty accurate depiction of what family and friends (and eager reporters) go through to visit people behind bars.

But those authorised media visits — what the Netflix Anna refers to as the “VIP” visits — are from a Dream Rikers, based on my own experience. Sure, reporters get to skip a few buses when they schedule ahead, but that can take a month to finagle and there’s nothing that feels very VIP at the jail itself.

Still, this was Sorokin, a woman who always manages to create an exception. So, I wondered: Did her jailers really serve tea to her and Pressler in a brightly furnished private room? Anna said that they did not.

“Def no tea at rikers!” Sorokin texted from her corrections facility. But, she added, visitors had access to a cash-only coffee machine while she was in prison upstate, though “it doesn’t come in porcelain cups,” as the tea appears to in the show.

The courtroom drama

As in many Manhattan courtroom dramatisations, Inventing Anna features a different, more aesthetically pleasing courthouse from the one where the real trial took place. The one shown in the series is on Chambers Street, about a 10-minute walk from where Sorokin actually stood trial. But if you watch the first episode carefully, you’ll glimpse the much shabbier courthouse where the case played out, at 111 Centre St.

Far more precise: the drama inside the courthouse. Spodek, Sorokin’s lawyer (played in the series by Arian Moayed), delivered a made-for-TV opening statement, comparing Sorokin’s New York dreams to those of Frank Sinatra. Similarly, the re-creation of his heated cross-examination of Rachel DeLoache Williams, a former friend of Anna’s who got stuck with a $62,000 bill for a Marrakech trip, was a slightly shorter version of the rousing original.

Yes, Spodek even made Williams cry — tears lost on the jury when she proclaimed, “This is the most traumatic experience I’ve ever been through.” American Express eventually forgave the debt, and Williams later profited from the experience thanks to deals for a book and with HBO.

As in the show, Sorokin sketched scenes from the courtroom throughout the trial, including a caricature of the lead prosecutor (published in The New York Times after the trial) delivering closing statements, head shrunken, shoulders squared and foot tapping while a juror dozes. In the distance: a brick castle labeled “FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE,” decorated with a hypnotic swirl of dollar, euro and pound signs.

The outfits

“Don’t crowd my entrance,” Anna instructs her lawyer in the finale before strutting into the courtroom. As depicted in the series, her courtroom outfits became a virtual runway show, acquiring an Instagram following and bolstering her image long after her Delvey days seemed over.

This is pretty accurate. Sorokin definitely worked it during the trial with the help of Anastasia Walker as her personal stylist. The Instagram account is real (@Annadelveycourtlooks). Several of her outfits are precisely re-created on the show. But as the weeks passed, Sorokin ran out of looks, she told me, and associates including Spodek and Pressler stepped in, as with the white dress.

Sometimes the outfits weren’t processed by Rikers in time for court, resulting in fashion meltdowns as she rejected subpar substitutes, one day delaying the court proceedings for almost an hour and a half. I once spotted a bag in the courtroom filled with wardrobe rejects, including a flurry of long sleeves and collared shirts, a light blue sleeveless dress (Ann Taylor, size 10), black pants (J. Crew, size 0) and a medium white button-down collared shirt from the Gap.

It all sounds very dramatic (and it was), but it wasn’t entirely Sorokin’s fault. Several years before her case, a City Council bill banned Rikers jumpsuits from the courtroom as potentially biasing for juries. Even so, Justice Diane Kiesel, the presiding judge, clearly detested the catwalk entrances and the holdups that preceded them — she ultimately announced that if Sorokin did not arrive promptly in court (however dressed), the trial would go on without her.

The accent

Sorokin’s virtually untraceable accent is among her most distinguishing features. Born in a town 20 minutes outside Moscow, she moved to Germany when she was 15 but struck out on her own at 19, flitting from Paris to New York. Her accent is a mélange of influences, from everywhere and nowhere at once.

So did Garner get it right? Ultimately, I found Netflix Anna too nasally, the words harshly diced, each syllable too carefully executed. While Garner has nailed the essence of the accent’s oddity, Sorokin’s actual voice is softer, the pronunciation subtler.

I wondered, too, what Sorokin thought of her TV character. “It’s really hard to tell where she would be from,” she said. Garner’s version, like Anna’s, is a voice without a home, spanning several continents and eras of Sorokin’s life. “She got it right in a way,” Sorokin acknowledged.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.