Based on the true-crime case of Anna Delvey, the fake German heiress who conned New York’s elite, Inventing Anna fails to be as compelling as its source material.
Judging by its premise and means of execution, Inventing Anna seemed like an inevitable success. With TV legend Shonda Rhimes at the helm, the limited Netflix series seemed set to capitalise upon the growing public hunger for a good scammer story. And in a post—Trump climate, the story of Anna Sorokin (née Delvey) should ignite feverous discourse. Sorokin rose to public attention when the journalist Jessica Pressler penned an article in 2017 detailing how the now 31—year—old swindled banks, high profile figures and organisations out of huge amounts of money to fund her jet-set lifestyle.
Should we root for her rags to riches, Robin Hood-esque rise to the top? Is Anna Sorokin the epitome of the ‘eat the rich’ movement? Or should we condemn her underhand ways of serving her own interest? It’s a moral quandary that Inventing Anna, disappointingly, never quite gets its teeth into.
Instead, the series chooses to structure its plot around a fictional journalist, Vivian (Anna Chlumsky), a stand-in for Pressler. This is intended to serve the double purpose of viewing Anna through an audience self-insert, as well as setting up shop in familiar Shondaland territory — the workplace environment. Coupled with the series’s divergence from tried and tested true-crime formats by having nine hour-long episodes, however, it has the effect of dulling what should be a suspense-driven drama.
Inventing Anna is never quite sure whether it wants to condemn its focal character or not. To an extent, the series wants us to consider how nothing in life is black and white. People have all kinds of motivations, and it’s not always fair or within our control what happens to us. But for all this potential nuance, Inventing Anna ultimately reverts to cliché in its final presentation of Sorokin — with her crimes portrayed as the acts of a girl just trying to get by in a man’s world.
Julia Garner’s performance as Anna is impressive. Not just any actor could pull off Sorokin’s bizarre amalgamation of accents and not have it become the distraction of every scene. But for a show boasting such capable acting talents, its emotional crux isn’t satisfying. You want there to be a more meaty climax to the relationships between Anna and Vivian and Anna and her lawyer, Todd. Instead, they wind up becoming her surrogate parents.
“As it is, the series suffers from not being bold enough to make its titular figure a compelling anti-hero.”
Perhaps Inventing Anna is a cautionary tale in translating real—world drama onto the big screen. Despite the series’s constant assurance that it is “completely true” only aside from “the parts that are totally made up”, it will be the casual viewer’s only reference point for remembering the story. The same could be said for another Netflix hit drama, The Crown. It can form the entire basis of a viewer’s understanding of the British Royal Family, regardless of any creative liberties taken. Despite their disclaimers, biopics do automatically acquire responsibility in their depictions of real people, especially when using their actual names.
In Inventing Anna, the character of Rachel is the victim of its heightened dramatisation. Rachel DeLoache Williams, both in the series and in real life, is the friend from whom Anna siphoned the most money. In Inventing Anna, she is depicted as the spoiled, overly—sensitive foil to Anna’s largely cool and collected exterior. In other words, she is often used as a plot device to increase audience sympathy for the titular character. After all, can we really blame Anna for defrauding her friend out of millions if the friend is so irritatingly portrayed?
The real DeLoache Williams has been vocal in her opposition to the series, sharing in a Vanity Fair newsletter that, “This sort of half-truth is more insidious than a total lie.” And Inventing Anna‘s appeal does lie in its intoxicating promise of true to life drama, shrouded in glossy, TV-ready sheen. It’s also difficult not to side-eye Netflix’s decision to treat DeLoache William’s fictional counterpart as a scapegoat of sorts when she had already sold her story to rival streaming service HBO.
Despite its initial promise, Inventing Anna is not the entertaining true—crime watching that it could be. Perhaps the muted nature of Anna’s actual crimes — swiping stolen cards, borrowing time by blaming delayed wire transfers — just doesn’t make for thrilling action. But you can’t help feeling there was a better way to explore this story. As it is, the series suffers from not being bold enough to make its titular figure a compelling anti-hero. Real-life morality may well be frustratingly black and white, but that just doesn’t make for exciting television.
Words By Eleanor Burleigh
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