Inventing Anna debuts on Netflix on Feb. 11, 2022.
The American Dream comes repackaged and rebranded for social media in Inventing Anna, the nine-part Shondaland series about con-woman Anna Sorokin, better known as Anna Delvey. Based on Jessica Pressler’s hit New York Magazine article, it begins, as the piece does, with Delvey behind bars and awaiting trial, before it dives back in time to explore how she got there, and who she may have stepped on while climbing the ladder of New York’s social scene. While its nearly 10-hour runtime seems puzzling at first — given the few thousand words on which it’s based — the snazzy Netflix caper functions both as an energetic retelling, and a broader look not only at Delvey’s exploits, but at how the riveting article came to be (Pressler, as it happens, co-produced the show). It also acts as a sequel to the article by continuing its story, and while it may not illuminate many new details about its subject, it’s a blast to watch.
It's told through the eyes and ears of a reporter based on Pressler named Vivian Kent (a lively and high-strung Anna Chlumsky), who works at the fictitious Manhattan Magazine. While looking to redeem herself for a profile that turned out to be a hoax — an event copied from the pages of Pressler’s own life — Kent stumbles upon an explosive tale waiting for the right storyteller, in the form of a mysterious 26-year-old immigrant who seemingly came out of nowhere and defrauded several people, hotels, and financial institutions.
A few major problems stand in Kent’s way. For one thing, she’s on thin ice with her editors, given her past missteps. For another, she’s pregnant and on the verge of giving birth — a ticking clock for her investigation. The biggest hurdle, however, is that no one she interviews can seem to agree on who Anna Delvey truly is. An oil tycoon? A hustler with an art degree? A European Meadow Soprano? This paves the path for a socialite Rashomon told with the slick pacing of a political thriller, the broad drama of daytime soap opera, and the gaudy panache of Gossip Girl. It’s the perfect vehicle for this kind of story.
Kent may be our guide, but Delvey — played by Julia Garner — is the main attraction. While the tale unfolds through differing accounts from various people Delvey befriended, Garner folds all these clashing perspectives into something resembling a singular, multifaceted portrait of someone who swings casually between an airheaded heiress, an insecure mean girl, and a stone-cold sociopath who wraps Kent around her finger from behind bars. She’s like if Hannibal Lecter murdered fewer people and was even more of a diva. It’s a debonair performance that’s as broad, explosive, and detestable as it is sympathetic, as Garner digs through a number of conflicting “truths” in the hopes of finding some glimmer of the real Delvey — just as Kent does during her investigations.
If there’s one place Garner slips up, it’s in crafting Delvey’s accent. Not because she’s too inauthentic, but because her approach is too straightforward; ironically, she may not be inauthentic enough. She captures (albeit imperfectly) the broad strokes of Delvey’s background — a girl born in Russia and raised in Germany — but she misses the real Delvey’s put-on Valley Girl affectations, à la Paris Hilton. Garner is an American actress trying to sound foreign; Delvey was a foreigner trying to slip into a mass-marketed, mainstream image of American celebrity tailor-made for the ’gram. Of course, the series needn’t stick closely to reality, especially since it fudges the truth in other ways — by the time Pressler reported on Delvey, she had already redeemed herself with another hit article that would go on to become the movie Hustlers; the show’s version of events is more dramatically convenient — but Delvey’s relationship to Americanness comes up frequently in the narrative, both directly, through other people’s observations, and obliquely, through numerous references to the changing face of Trump’s America.
However, where Inventing Anna fails in framing some of these intimate specifics, it succeeds tenfold in capturing the wide-eyed hunger of American capitalism, and the desperate rat-race for obnoxious affluence in the public eye. Director David Frankel sets a relentless pace in the first episode, and while there’s a marginal dip in energy in the two that follow, his return for the fourth entry helps steer things back on course. From then on, the show moves as swiftly and smoothly as one of Delvey’s schemes, with whip-smart nonlinear progression as Kent and her interview subjects dive deeper into Delvey’s story — and into their own, revealing the faults and desires that may have led them to be fooled by her in the first place.
When Delvey isn’t the main focus, Kent unearths her past with the help of a delightful chorus of upbeat older colleagues — Barry (Terry Kinney), Lou (Jeff Perry), and Maud (Anna Deavere Smith) — and with an equally fun cast of supporting characters who weave in and out of Delvey’s path. Chief among them is Delvey’s weary attorney Todd Spodek (Arian Moayed), whose complicated reasons for taking on such a high-profile case help pull back the curtain on Delvey’s allure (Kent is similarly drawn to Delvey’s story for reasons she may not yet understand). Each character from the article, whether sage-like trainer Kacy (Laverne Cox), hard-headed concierge Neff (Alexis Floyd), or opportunistic author Rachel (Katie Lowes) has a different financial relationship to Delvey, which helps paint a more complete picture of her crimes, but their personal relationships to her are just as revelatory. The most intriguing thing about Delvey is the effect she has on other people. She pulls them into her orbit just as easily as she ejects them from it, and Garner’s calculated approach makes them hang on her every word. Her approval is as valuable as the designer dresses and gourmet dinners she swindles her way into.
As much as the show is about Kent investigating Delvey (and eventually, navigating thorny ethical concerns), it’s about the way Delvey reads Kent during their prison interviews, and the way she impacts Kent’s relationship to herself. While it aims to unravel a web of lies in amusing fashion, it also zeroes in on an often under-discussed element of the original saga: the idea that Delvey knew how to play people because they so often provided her with the handbook themselves. The world she waltzed into, of fashionistas and finance bros ready to part with millions (if it meant making millions more), wasn’t all that hard to figure out. It just took someone who truly understood the ostentatious facade of it all, more than any detail of its inner workings.
This understanding of the story makes Inventing Anna what it is: a show all about superficial pizzazz, in which flashy aesthetics ripped from reality TV — sliding split-screens, glamorous social feeds, obvious (and expensive!) song choices, and montages of excess — aren’t just surface texture. They’re text and subtext too, appearing each time someone recalls when they first met Delvey, or when they were first lured in by her mysterious charm. The more Kent tries to put the pieces together in ways that resemble a tidy narrative, the less sense the big picture seems to make, because there’s hauntingly little beneath the gilded surface — but boy, is it fun to gaze at.
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