Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, TV And Film
Kimberley Bond
Inventing Anna is our current TV obsession, with Shonda Rhimes’ take on con artist Anna Delvey and her numerous schemes racing to the top of the Netflix charts.
The series sees fake heiress Anna, played by Julia Garner, infiltrate the upper echelons of New York society and con hundreds of thousands of dollars out of banks, lawyers and wealthy friends.
However, one of Anna’s former friends has been less than impressed with the depiction of the grifter in the glossy Netflix show.
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Rachel DeLoache Williams, who is played by Katie Lowes in Inventing Anna, has described the series as a “dangerous distortion” of the facts.
As depicted in the show, Anna conned Rachel out of $62,000 (£45,692) during an ill-fated trip to Marrakech, where Anna failed to pay for their luxury hotel suite.
While this was one of the many charges Delvey faced in court, she was acquitted of stealing the money from Rachel - but convicted on eight other charges including grand larceny and theft of services.
And Rachel, who previously worked as a staffer at Vanity Fair magazine, has since lambasted the series for reportedly paying Anna $300,000 (£221,000) for the rights to her story.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Rachel explained: “This show is playing a fine line – peddling it as a true story, but also [in the opening disclaimer] saying, ‘except all the parts that aren’t.’
“At what point is the half-truth more dangerous than the lie?”
She continued: "I think promoting this whole narrative and celebrating a sociopathic, narcissistic, proven criminal is wrong. "Having had a front-row seat to [the Anna circus] for far too long, I’ve studied the way a con works more than anybody needs to. You watch the spectacle, but you’re not paying attention to what’s being marketed."
In the Air Mail newsletter, Rachel added: “Netflix isn’t just putting out a fictional story. It’s effectively running a con woman’s PR – and putting money in her pocket.”
Rachel told her side of the gripping tale of Anna’s crimes in her own book, My Friend Anna: The True Story of A Fake Heiress.
Lena Dunham, of Girls fame, is set to be adapting Rachel’s story for HBO, set to be released later this year.
Much like in Inventing Anna, Delvey (real name Sorokin) is fairly unrepentant for her crimes.
Speaking to the New York Times, she explained: “I’d be lying to you and to everyone else and to myself if I said I was sorry for anything.
“I regret the way I went about certain things.”
Inventing Anna is available to stream on Netflix.