by Tabatha Golat –
There’s been an interesting trend in recent years of true crime retellings infiltrating entertainment industry storylines. From podcasts to movies and TV series, these real-life docudramas are everywhere with plenty of buzz. There’s something about true crime that gets under our skin and piques the interest of even the most innocent of hearts. While I’m not particularly drawn to the guts and gore of these retellings, I was excited to check out the new Netflix series based on a real-life con artist titled Inventing Anna. This nine-episode miniseries is roughly crafted from a 2018 article in New York Magazine titled “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People” by Jessica Pressler.
In this series, Anna Delvey (real name Sorokin) is a con artist who changed her name and inserted herself amongst New York city’s most elite while pretending to be a German heiress. The series explores the various white-collar crimes Anna commits while maintaining that her father is a wealthy German patriarch. From scamming her stays in fancy hotels, cheating friends out of money, and even “stealing” a jet, the story of Anna Sorokin’s true-life con-artist mastery is a wild ride. Played expertly by Julia Garner, Anna is an intelligent, bizarre and dare I say brilliant (if not overly confident) con woman whose goal to create her own foundation for the ultra wealthy ultimately lands her in jail.
Produced by Shonda Rhimes, this series takes some creative license with the real-life story, but mainly stays true to the Anna Sorokin scandal. One of the biggest talking points of the series is Julia Garner’s accent as she portrays the swindler.
Truthfully, the accent is distracting, but once you learn more about Anna’s background, Garner’s portrayal is impressively spot on. Her mastery of Sorokin’s bizarre accent – a Russian pretending to be German influenced by her time in New York – is sure to add to her Emmy nods.
If you are looking to dip your toes into the world of white-collar true crime and love a good dramatization, this is the perfect series to keep you entertained. Admittedly after viewing Inventing Anna I went down a rabbit hole researching the fact vs. fiction elements of Anna’s story and was truly impressed with the bizarre lengths she went to insert herself into the world of wealthy elites. Even after her conviction (which she’s since served time for) Anna seems relatively unfazed by her brazen acts and was quoted saying, “The thing is, I’m not sorry … I’d be lying to you and everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything.”
Looking for other real-life crime dramatizations? Check out my top five recommendations below (available online on most streaming channels).
1. Catch Me if You Can
2. Dirty John
3. The Tinder Swindler
4. House of Gucci
5. The Trial of The Chicago 7
