It may help to know that the series draws most of its inspiration from a 2018 article written by Jessica Pressler for New York Magazine. Rhimes says she read the article and immediately called her office, telling them “we have to get it…I was obsessed.” Watching the series, it’s not hard to see why. The scale and audacity of Delvey’s grifts (or was it delusion?) seem stranger than fiction, practically begging to be adapted for the screen. For the most part, what viewers see in these nine episodes is what really happened, with minor adjustments. There are little details that are true in spirit, but names have been changed. There are a number of characters in the show that don’t have a direct counterpart in the article, who are likely composites of people Anna stole or scammed from, or possibly inventions in order to move her story forward and get her from, say, New York to a yacht off of Ibiza. The main characters, too, are either more fleshed-out or modified versions of their real-life counterparts. Besides Sorokin (played by Ozark Emmy winner Julia Garner), for example, “The Futurist” in Pressler’s article, a.k.a. Sorokin’s boyfriend early on in her grifting career, is given a full name and his own motivations for both staying with Sorokin and being suspicious of her intent. Anna Chlumsky plays a reporter named Vivian Kent, who is “very, very, very loosely based” on Pressler. In the show, Kent becomes obsessed with Anna’s story, to the point of covering one wall of her apartment (in the nursery, but we’ll get to that) with photos and dates, string theory-style. That… probably didn’t happen in real life. But a lot of what we see in Inventing Anna is indeed ripped from the headlines—and from real life. Keep reading to find out how InventingAnna is based on an all-too-true story.
Is Anna Delvey Real? Is Inventing Anna based on a true story?
As implausible as it seems, what you see on screen is taken directly from Pressler’s article. Sorokin was indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts of grand larceny and theft of services, and both the article and series take us through a mostly linear timeline of when and how each of them happened. So, for example, the outlandish, Kardashian-inspired trip to Marrakesh which left one of Sorokin’s friends, Rachel Williams, in debt to the tune of $62,000: True. The private jet Sorokin “borrowed” to fly to Warren Buffett’s conference/soirée in Omaha, Nebraska: True! Staying at lavish hotels without paying: Yep, true. Faking statements to secure loans: Also true. Even some smaller, if still eye-raising, examples were taken almost verbatim from the article, such as Sorokin peeling off $100 bill after $100 bill in a successful attempt to take a hotel concierge’s attention away from other guests, and calling a friend in tears because she needs help securing airfare—then asking for a first-class ticket. For other events, the article is a springboard and the series dramatizes how they might have played out. For example, Pressler has noted that the manager of the Delvey family estate, Peter W. Hennecke, “seems to have been a fictional character”; the series offers an explanation for how Sorokin faked his phone conversations.
Who is Inventing Anna based on?
That’s the big question, isn’t it? Just who exactly is this woman? We know that she was born Anna Sorokin near Moscow in 1991, that she moved with her family to Germany when she was 16, and after spending a year at an art college in London, she took an internship at a fashion magazine in Paris, which is when she started calling herself Anna Delvey. She has claimed Delvey was her mother’s maiden name, but we know that’s not the case, as Pressler’s article mentions her parents did not recognize the name Delvey. When she arrived on New York City’s elite social scene, she was passing herself off as Anna Delvey, a German heiress who would be coming into her trust fund soon. Different people she made contact with had different explanations for her family’s wealth, as Pressler outlines. Some said her father was a diplomat, others said the family were antique collectors, and it’s not clear if Anna herself was the source of these explanations or if, as Pressler suggests, Anna simply presented herself as wealthy and everyone else filled in the gaps.
How much did Netflix pay Anna Delvey?
According to BBC News, Sorokin signed a contract with Netflix for the film rights to her story less than two weeks after Pressler’s article went live. Sorokin received a check for $320,000; however, New York prohibits criminals from making any sort of profit from their crimes (known as the “Son of Sam” law, passed in 1977 after publishers wanted to pay serial killer David Berkowitz for his memoirs), so the money is instead going towards paying back the victims of Sorokin’s scams, as well as her attorney’s fees.
How was Anna Sorokin caught?
Pressler’s article simply states that Sorokin had done some check kiting in order to pay for a trip to Los Angeles, and was apprehended by the LAPD outside of a rehab center in Malibu. The series shows Anna leaving for L.A. at the same time she’s expected to appear in court on charges of nonpayment brought by the W Hotel, staying for a short time at the L.A. hotel Chateau Marmont, where she may or may not have overdosed on pills and wine. After landing in the hospital, she checks into Passages Malibu, a luxury treatment center. So how did the police know where to find her? For that, we go back to the friend left paying $62,000 for the trip to Marrakesh, Rachel Williams. After repeated attempts to get Sorokin to pay her back, Williams first went to the police and then to the Manhattan district attorney. According to Williams in the book she wrote about her experience, when Sorokin failed to show up in court, the assistant district attorney asked if Williams would text Sorokin. Williams was able to establish contact and eventually arranged a lunch date for the two of them while she was in L.A. for work. Williams informed the police of the meeting and they were able to arrest Sorokin as she left Passages on her way to lunch.
Was Jessica Pressler pregnant while working on the Inventing Anna article?
Inventing Anna plays a lot with the idea that Vivian Kent was working on two deadlines: her story on Sorokin, and her baby’s due date; it was vital to her that she finish her article before having the baby. In reality, Pressler was indeed pregnant while working on her story, as she explained on the Recode Media podcast in June 2018. It’s unknown when she gave birth, but social media posts suggest it was several weeks, possibly a couple of months, after she finished her article; the dramatic, water-breaking moment the show presents likely didn’t actually occur.
Was Jessica Pressler’s career really in trouble?
In the show, Sorokin represents a career-saving vehicle for Vivian, as it becomes clear that at some point in the recent past, she’d published something that wound up being a hoax, and she became persona non grata at the magazine and unable to land any other reporting jobs. This is true to a point. Pressler did write an article in late 2014 about a high school student rumored to have made millions in the stock market. The student did give Pressler a bank statement showing his eight-figure net worth; his family revealed after the story went to press that the statement was falsified, and New York Magazine accepted full responsibility for printing the lie. Pressler did have an offer from Bloomberg on the table at the time, but it was rescinded because of this. Pressler would go on, however, to publish a story about a group of grifting strippers; she was nominated for a National Magazine Award for the piece, the film rights to the article were quickly snapped up, and the feature film Hustlers premiered in 2019. The idea that Sorokin would save Pressler’s career seems doubtful (though we do enjoy the ironic implication that Kent would redeem herself by writing about another liar).
Did Anna Sorokin try to kill herself?
We don’t know. Pressler’s article says nothing about any attempt, so it is possible that Sorokin’s suicide attempt is the series’ way of manufacturing a series of steps to get Sorokin from arriving in L.A. to winding up at Passages. The show itself raises the possibility that the attempt was fake–we see two scenes at the Chateau Marmont, one with somber music as Sorokin takes too many pills and washes them down with wine, ‘gramming the entire event, and another where she calculatingly calls for another bottle to be delivered to her room and leaves the door open so she can be “discovered.” Vivian also calls out Sorokin on this, deducing that she faked an OD to get rushed to the hospital, where she could bluff her way through a psych evaluation to get herself checked into rehab because her visa was about to expire and rehab would grant her more time.
Did Anna Delvey’s trial really turn into a fashion show?
On Inventing Anna, Anna solicits her friend Neff’s help in persuading a celebrity stylist to dress her for court, and refuses to appear in court unless she can do so stylishly. “I have a brand to consider,” she tells her attorney, Todd Spodek. “Also, it’s different for women. Do I really need to explain this to you?” When her original outfit fails to arrive in time, it’s Vivian who rushes to H&M to get something appropriate, and Sorokin finally appears in court, a bit deflated without the audience/fan club she was expecting to find waiting to witness her trial. Neff immediately sets up an Instagram account just for Anna’s courtroom fashion. The Instagram account does exist, although its name is slightly different and it only shows 20 posts instead of 3000-plus. There’s also no indication of who set the account up. Further, the idea to dress Sorokin in the manner to which she was more or less accustomed came from her defense team, who reportedly were concerned that attending in prison khakis would make her look guilty. It was Spodek who hired the stylist, Anatastia Walker, who had among her clients such celebrities as T-Pain and Courtney Love.
Did Billy McFarland know Anna Delvey?
In Inventing Anna’s fourth episode, Anna is staying at an extremely bro-tastic party pad that also seems to double as the headquarters for Magnises, which was Billy McFarland’s membership club-card company. McFarland, you may recall, is the man behind the notorious Fyre Festival, for which he conned myriad investors out of about $26 million. It seems too poetic for one grifter to be crashing at another grifter’s place, but it did happen. Sorokin knew people who worked with McFarland and asked to stay for a few days, which turned into four months. According to one source, McFarland kept hinting for her to leave, but she wouldn’t, and the company eventually moved locations. p.s. Another scammer sent to the slammer who Sorokin was pals with back in the day? Infamous “Pharma Bro” MartinShkreli. Next, Daphne Is Back and a New Romance Is Brewing in First Look Photos From Bridgerton Season 2—See Them All, Plus Everything We Know About the Sexy Series’ Return
