Netflix's Inventing Anna: The good, the bad and the messy
Inventing Anna was a Netflix series inspired by real-life con artist Anna Sorokin. She is a Russian-born German citizen who went to the United States. Under the pretense that she was a German heiress with a trust fund worth $60 million, with the last name "Delvey", she managed to scam banks, financial institutions and hotels of $275,000. Part of it was to supposedly fund her business, the Anna Delvey Foundation, part of it went into frivolous pursuits.
Anna Sorokin was often propped up as the quintissential example of "faking it till you make it". Giving people the image of immense wealth, being able to create and provide the world with infinite opportunities, was a self-fulfilling prophecy that would eventually open your doors to the high life.
General Thoughts
The series has an interesting backstory, and I thought the series did try to make full use of that potential. The initial episodes discuss the (unfair) importance of knowing people in high places, and how networking is sometimes more important than actual marketable skills. The series talks about how obsessed people are with the image of wealth, and how the image alone opens doors for you.
I also enjoyed the mode of storytelling. The character of Anna Delvey is gradually reconstructed by the protagonist (journalist Vivian Kent (through interviews with people who had crossed paths with Anna Delvey). Everybody contributed a piece of Anna Delvey through their own lens, and you can see how each of their arcs affect their reactions to Anna Delvey. It's a refreshing change from typical storytelling where you see the story through the protaganist. In here, each character's actions and motivations are consistent with their own experience with Anna Delvey (except for one, which I talk about later). As the audience, you see all these points of view and come to your own conclusion.
The show was heavily criticised for trying to force the audience to take Anna's side. To that, I disagree.
Anna Sorokin is portrayed a downright unlikeable, unethical, psychopathic person and the show makes it impossible for you to root for her at all. She has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, is a sub-par crimminal and her incessant screeching added insult to injury for an already detestable character. By the way, I think Julia Garner did an amazing job portraying her.
In my opinion, the point the series is making, is not about whether Anna Sorokin's actions were ultimately right or wrong. It is about society's reaction to people like her.
It is easy to create protagonists who are heroes. They just have to encompass every quality people want in themselves, and go out there to right some wrong that people perceive to exist in this world.
When the main character is the anti-thesis of that, you find yourself asking how people like these (there are many in real-life) manage to make it to centre stage in society. Who were their enablers? How were they created? Are there societal structures that feed such people?
We are drawn in by the "charisma"
People like Anna are full of big dreams and have great visions. They make sure you hear it, all the time.
"I want to create something that is mine," said Anna Sorokin, as she desribed her vision for the Anna Delvey Foundation, her art gallery/club/hotel/restaurant/German bakery/?????. "What am I? This club, this foundation will be who I am. I have to build this, so artists and people like me finally have a home. A place where we belong."
If you are as confused as I am, it is because these people may be full of passion, but that's all their words are. Fluff. Watch them stare back at you dumbfounded when you ask the very valid question of how they would pull it off. (or with "I don't know, I don't know, let's pour in millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to find out!")
I think it's interesting that the show explores her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Chase, this tech start-up guy who was exactly like her character-wise. He attracted investors by aggressive networking and sweet-talking them, then blew all his investors' money away on even more marketing, and his app flopped before it even saw the light of the day.
Anna Sorokin would go on to cheat banks into lending her funds. She would fabricate stories about her million dollar trust-fund in Germany (which didn't exist), and fabricate actual bank statements, create fake characters using a voice-changing app to "vouch" for the existence of the fund. She took her mentor's credit card and spent hundreds of thousands on it. She took her friends to Morocco and racked up a bill of $60,000 despite not having a single working credit card (her friend Rachel ended up footing the bill-more on this later).
Is it a case of like-attracts-like?
"Charisma" has real-life consequences. How many serial murderers/abusers managed to lure their victims in in this manner? How many undeserving politicians have we voted into power for this reason?
The next time you find yourself supporting this over-zealous, starry-eyed, high energy figure a bit too blindly for comfort, take a step back to logically analyse their ideas and see if you can stand behind what they say. If your answer is no, do consider that your response to them may be irrational and think hard before handing over your money/life/vote to this person.
In the series, most of the characters we are introduced to fell for exactly that, and each got burned.
When the first red flags fly, we deny they are there.
The three were drawn in by Anna's image of wealth and the people (she supposedly) could introduce to them. They ate, shopped and went on holidays with her, until they realised: Anna could not pay for anything.
Anna accumulated a bill of thousands at the hotel Neff was a receptionist at, which almost landed the latter in hot soup due to the elite namelists she had placed Anna on. Infinitely worse was Rachel's situation. After being conned into going on a holiday in Morocco which Anna had claimed would be "full expenses paid", Rachel was forced to put down her work credit card in a Morrocan hotel or be arrested in a foreign land. After Rachel fled with her boyfriend, leaving her work card at the hotel, Anna then racked up a $60,000 bill on it annd refused to repay Rachel for months.
Yes, forced- a decision made under duress was not a free choice. "Consenting" to something because the alternative (being locked away in a Moroccan jail cell) was worse is not consent.
Despite that, Kacy, Neff and Rachel kept convincing themselves that Anna was a good person. Rachel held on to the misplaced faith that Anna would eventually pay her back.
Rachel never cancelled her work credit card upon landing back in the US, and did not report the encounter in Morocco to her superiors. Her justification was that she still trusted (after three months!) that Anna would eventually pay her back. This would eventually land her in deeper trouble when the finance dept ran an audit and the debt was found out.
I think about the times I myself stuck by a toxic friend and broke down the mindset behind it. For some part, it was a sunk-cost fallacy. I had known this person for two years, spent so much time with them, and we used to be so close, I couldn't just drop her and go (which is not true, I could and should have left anytime). For some part, it was also because the toxic person gaslighted me and broke my self-esteem down (publicly, multiple times). I also suspect for people who have never encountered truly horrible people in life, they still believed in the good in everyone, and assume everyone else will extend the same kindness and empathy they extend to others.
1 in every 100 people is a psychopath. You may want to take this into consideration the next time you want to try and see the good in someone who has never demonstrated any.
When people show you who they are, believe them, and bolt for the door.
We try to find "the other side of the story"
So you realise, this charismatic figure isn't all who they appear to be. You thought they were going to be the star of their generation, then they get arrested. So how? You try to dig a little deeper, thinking she couldn't just be a simple criminal, there had to be something more. Another perspective.
Anna: "McCaw (the prosecutor) is painting this public picture of me as some dumb, shallow superficial person who is just after money. I want you to know that's not me at all. I'm not some party girl, I'm trying to build a business."
Anna Sorokin had me in the first three episodes, I am not going to lie. I was really expecting to have my mind changed.
Perhaps, what she did wasn't that bad, she toe-ed some grey zone that was unethical but wasn't quite illegal. Perhaps, what she did had a larger purpose behind it.
Maybe she felt that cheating was her only option. After all, I did feel for her when she was ostracised by the circle of accomplished older ladies. Being a newbie in the industry, being left out by the veterans who have established themselves, feeling like you could never match up- who can't relate to this?
The reality hits when you watch on and realise i) the above does not explain why she nearly destroyed the lives of people who considered her a friend, ii) had she succeeded in getting her funds, she would not have channeled the money productively into her business anyway, iii) it did not explain the pattern of behaviour she demonstrated outside of her business which consistently pointed her to lazy, selfish and unethical.
There is no "other side", the whole story is clear as day.
We try to find excuses
"What she did wasn't so bad". - Vivian Kent, the journalist
It wasn't so bad because men do it too and get away with it. It's because she was a kid. Yes, Anna Sorokin, born 1991, is older than I am and gets to hide behind the "kid" excuse.
"Even if it was, you deserved it" - Neff Davis, the loyal servant
Rachel just wanted to use Anna for connections therefore deserved to be forced to be choose between getting scammed of $60,000 (which largely wasn't even her own expenses) and losing her job, or being locked up in a country with questionable human rights laws.
And as if an attempt to grasp at straws, Todd's argument as Anna's defense lawyer was that because Rachel managed to write a viral article and a book about the ordeal which in turn earned her $600,000, she was not a victim of anything. I know Todd was just doing his job but I call bullshit on that. Using this logic, nothing will ever be a chargeable offense if the victim manages to turn their lives around instead of... I don't know wallowing in whatever harm was caused to them by the criminal for life.
"Even if you didn't deserve it, she had a good reason for it" - Todd Spodek, Anna Sorokin's defense attorney
"Other people did it and got away with it!"- Anna Sorokin herself
Men fail upwards all the time, said Anna. Billy McFarland, who failed flat on his face, who is still in jail for wire fraud and has been barred from holding any financial positions for life, begs to differ.
Then, we try to find answers
Unable to let go of her obsession with Anna Sorokin, Vivian Kent abandoned her newborn daughter at home and traveled all the way to Germany to find Sorokin's family. After a lot of stalking, violation of boundaries and racist remarks towards Sorokin's father, the mother finally opened up.
The basis for all that obssessive stalking was because Anna Sorokin tried to kill herself. (We later find out she faked a suicide attempt, lied to a psychologist about her father being new-money gangster who had alcoholism and got violent when drunk, all these to have herself checked into rehab because her visa was expiring).
There, Anna Sorokin'a parents served her the truth. She was born a sociopath.
Anna's parents were as ordinary as they could get. They were working-class Russian immigrants who loved their daughter, but they never understood her. The piece of the puzzle that Vivian Kent was trying so hard to get, about a violent, power-hungry abusive father, did not exist.
We tend to believe that humans are inherently good. That hurt people hurt others. That's why we look into the background of evil people to figure out the answers. That's why some still show kindness even to the most inhumane of monsters (not that I believed Anna was a monster). We cannot bring ourselves to believe some people are assholes just because. They grew to be mega-assholes because nobody gave them any consequences for their behaviour.
We need to accept that sometimes, there is no missing piece to the puzzle. "They were born evil" is the whole puzzle. We don't need to understand their story, we just need to walk away.
"I can't just leave her / I created this monster"
When all fails, you realise you've been suckered in way too deep and can no longer emotionally detach yourself from this person. This is the terminal stage of being involved with someone like Anna Sorokin, and Vivian and Todd were this by the last episode. They are completely brainwashed and are willing to leave their families and children behind to stick with Anna, and for what again?
By the end of episode 9, they are the only two people left close to Anna Sorokin. And by now they had truly and completely lost their minds, sucked into a personality cult.
Todd and Vivian had similarities with Anna. Todd was a working-class man who married into a rich family, but could never seem to fit in the high society his wife was part of. He wanted to belong, and winning Anna’s case would bring him to prominence. This fueled his obsession with the case. Vivian Kent struggled as a woman in the workforce, suffered a career slump and needed her reputation back. She saw herself in anna- a woman trying to make her mark in a male-dominated industry. Hence her unhealthy obsession with anna even past the publication of her article, even when she no longer had obligations to anna professionally.
To an outsider this is irrational, but it’s logical if seen from their perspective. It’s why we never understand why people get into cults or follow certain politicians. There’s something missing in their lives that we don’t see.
Neff is trash
I hate Neff. I think the producers have no idea what to do with this character. In the first half of the show she is written as this upright, unpretentious young woman with a good head on her shoulders. She was courageous enough to stand up to Anna when Anna called her colleagues at the hotel "broke bitches". She told Anna not to insult them as they were hardworking woman- indicating Neff might like the opportunities Anna showed her, but Neff was still a grounded person. I liked her right up to Episode 8.
However, I suspect because the producers have to stay true to real-life events, (because the real-life Neff Davis was the only person who stuck by Anna from start to end) they make the character Neff do a 180. I am very perplexed by her character arc.
The same character who was close to getting a stroke when broke Anna made her pay for a $900 dinner had the audacity to get angry at Rachel who paid $60,000 for Anna's solo holiday after Anna almost got them all arrested at Morocco.
The same character who stuck to Anna like glue because of the connections Anna could get her had the audacity to disparage Rachel's character for doing the same.
The same character who insulted Vivian Kent for not being upfront about what she wanted (which was to save her career using Anna Sorokin's story), was herself not upfront about her motives for being friends with Anna (aka money) and kept hiding behind the word lOyaLtY.
The same character who called Rachel a social climber, is besties with an UNETHICAL social climber.
The same character who respected Anna for the HUHHHHHHSTLE (is that what they call crime these days?), cannot respect Rachel turning a bad situation to her advantage and "hustling" from it. (I personally think Rachel's the real "girlboss" here)
Forget Anna Sorokin, Neff Davis (the one in the show, not the real-life one) is the sort of person we should avoid at all costs. She's the kind of psycho who will attack anyone around her who doesn't confirm to her very long list of oddly-specific, yet very contradictory, set of values. And by the way her standards for you also change depending on your race, gender, and whether you HURRRRRSTLEd in the one specific way that was acceptable to her. Also likes to play the race card when out of arguments, so beware.
The screenshots above were Neff's reaction when Rachel said she was bought. It hit a raw nerve apparently, so she made it about race. Some people might have been born slaves but they courageously fought for the emancipation of their race and their descendents. That is honourable.
Some people are would pay money to have their lives, their souls and bodies enslaved, that to me is the true tragedy.
In fact, the real-life Neff seems a lot more clear-headed about the fact that their friendship was transactional. She admits Anna is a scam and admits she doesn't mind her in spite of that, and at least (from the articles about her) doesn't seem to be a self-righteous hypocrite.
Tries to be woke, but slumps into a chair
The attempts at being woke are also all over the shop. One of the key ideas of the series is about how Anna was penalised for being a woman, an immigrant (European but marginalised, apparently), for trying to ascend the ladder in a capalist society. She apparently did what men had been doing for centuries, got punished for it while men got away (I think her friend Billy McFarland would beg to differ).
Some of the characters also tried to portray her to be some Robin Hood who cheated the rich, except unlike Robin Hood, she didn't donate it to a worthy cause. She intended to accumulate her ill-gotten wealth to turn into another oppressor in society - just look at how she treated service staff. These ideas were completely inconsistent with the way Anna is portrayed which was nothing but loud, bratty, selfish, implusive and unethical.
I don't deny that women generally have a harder time being taken seriously in the workplace. There are many legitimate issues preventing women who reaching their fullest economic potential and they must be addressed. However, you don't create a hypothetical scenario or lie to justify your cause. It is intellectually dishonest and discredits everyone who is fighting legitimately for the cause. If the series wanted to drop this idea as food for thought, they should have done it a better way. The series has Chase and I thought they would use him as a parallel comparison to make this point, but the storyline is never pursued.
So Anna thought the reason the banks did not want to loan her money was because she was a young woman. She marched into the banker Alan Reed's office to wokesplain the challenges women in business face. Interesting lecture, but had she tried actually having money? Banks only care about one thing- assurance that you can repay the money you borrow, with interest. Full stop. Billy McFarland was also denied loans because whether male or female, the bank isn't interested in empty words about your grand business plans. They want to see real assets! It's 40 MILLION you are trying to loan here!
Closing thoughts
Despite its flaws, I enjoyed the series. It doesn't have the whole preachy - "work hard in life, there are no shortcuts" tagline to it but it is ultimately the most important message. We see it through Vivian Kent (much as she had many problems herself like literal non-stop slogging while pregnant, which was not exactly something worth celebrating, I give it to her) and Rachel (amazing business acumen)- they go on to live well.
I want to give a special shoutout to my favourite character Kacy my queen. She was loyal to Rachel, and despite her switching sides at the end, I felt that this was consistent with her character.
Kacy got a lot of hate for ditching Rachel after finding out she called the cops on Anna when the latter was in therapy. To Kacy, Anna was a troubled woman in rehab after a (faked) suicide attempt at the point when Rachel called the cops on her. From Kacy's point of view, Rachel doing that was yanking a mentally unwell woman out of treatment into cold, inhumane prison.
In the Morocco episode, Kacy alluded to having a history of self-harm. This was likely a sensitive topic for her I completely understand that she didn’t want to forgive Rachel.
The drunk client Nicole who called Anna out for the fraud she was was also brilliant. The supporting characters, especially Neff's, Todd's, Rachel's and Kacy's partners, were all great too. They had a good head on their shoulders and saw the situation clearly as outsiders. AND the hotel manager who kicked Anna Sorokin out LOL loved that too!
The prosecutor Catherine McCaw said it all best:
p.s. The real Rachel WIlliams wrote a book "My Friend Anna, the true story of a fake heiress", which documented the her friendship with the scammer. It is available on Amazon if you are interested in her point of view.
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