‘Inventing Anna’: Shonda Rhimes on Rooting for and Keeping Distance from Anna Delvey

Anna Delvey may not be interested in bingeing Inventing Anna, but Netflix is hopeful everyone else intends to.

The nine-episode limited series about the infamous “Soho grifter,” a fake German heiress who conned her way into New York society, marks Shonda Rhimes’ first solo creation for the streaming service since inking her groundbreaking deal five years ago. Ozark Emmy winner Julia Garner stars as Delvey (real name Anna Sorokin), with Veep’s Anna Chlumsky playing a fictionalized version of New York magazine’s Jessica Pressler, the journalist (and now producer) who wrote the Delvey story on which the series is based.

Ahead of Inventing Anna’s premiere, Rhimes spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her decision not to meet Delvey, how her perceptions of her central character changed over the course of the series and what she really thought of the piece that Delvey recently published from jail. 

You read Jessica Pressler’s 2018 New York magazine article and you knew immediately that this was the next story you wanted to tell. Let’s start easy: Why?

I think I was on a treadmill somewhere when I read the article. What I remember most is that Jessica Pressler’s writing painted such an amazing picture of that crazy period of time in New York. That “summer of scam” moment, with Fyre Festival and Theranos and all that stuff. I could just visualize it all and she had such vivid characterizations of these people, it made me want to dive in. There was something about Anna and her ambition gone wrong, if you will, or not gone wrong — however you want to look at it — and I was really into that. I thought there was something really intriguing about her and the women that surrounded her.

Pressler, or a version of her, became a very substantial character in your story. Was that always your plan? And why did you make that choice for the narrative?

Well, it was interesting, I sat down and I had long conversations with Jessica about how she reported the story, how she met Anna, all of these things. She really opened her herself up and gave us all this stuff. And Anna is a very unknowable person. She’s invented herself in a way that was just so interesting. We needed a reliable narrator, and Anna was definitely not going to be our reliable narrator. And almost nobody else was either, because everybody else had been taken in, fully taken in, by Anna. Plus, Jessica had this really compelling story. She really was, like, nine months pregnant and gave birth seconds after writing the article, which I thought was amazing. She had this redemption story. There was just so much about her that was interesting to me that I wanted to incorporate, while also being able to take the creative license of letting it not be Jessica. [The journalist character is named Vivian in the series.]

Presumably Vivian also gave the audience someone to root for in a way that Anna made it harder to do?

There was some of that. If you really look at the shows I write, I’m such a process person. I love the process and the process of the reporting was super interesting to me. The process of Vivian having a redemption was very interesting to me. The “Google never forgets” thing was really a fascinating little piece of information for me. That piece really allowed us to layer in and understand how to interpret Anna as well. I root for Anna, but I don’t necessarily expect everyone else to. People have their judgements. I’ve heard people tell me that she’s a sociopath from watching the show, and I’ve heard people tell me that they feel sorry for her. I wanted it to be that you came away with your own interpretation and I didn’t know if that was going to be possible if she was our main protagonist. 

How has your own perception of Anna changed during the course of making this show?

When I read the article, I remember thinking, like, there’s no way I’m rooting for this person. That [changed] the more I got to know Jessica, and Jessica’s really how I got to know Anna, because I purposely made a decision not to meet her — so, it was through the video interviews that I had Jessica do for us and the extensive extra research that Jessica did. Jessica went to Germany. And, the more we knew, the more I had a picture of somebody for whom you change a few details and she would’ve been successful. You change a few details, and she would’ve lived an entirely different life. That’s what was fascinating to me about her.

Some of the people who were taken by her, and so traumatized by their taken-ness, I was like, “Why were you taken? A little bit of it was wish-fulfillment on your part. You were taken because you wanted to be taken.” That is the art of a con artist, obviously. She fulfills something in you. Anna’s a perfect mirror of whatever you need her to be. She was also 26 years old. But the reason I feel most sorry for her, and it’s said in the series, is that she wanted to be famous and she’s made famous by this article and that fame is why she is in jail. If this had not been some big, fancy article, if this had not gotten all that attention, I don’t know that she would be in jail right now.

You decided you didn’t want to meet her, but you sent Jessica in to do more research. What more did you want to know in order to be able to write the series?

I had a lot of questions. At that point, the trial hadn’t happened, so I wanted to know what she felt about the prosecutor. Some of it was just me wanting to see if we could get her to talk about her childhood and where she was from — to see if she was going to be able to tell us any pieces of truth on camera. What’s fascinating about the video, by the way, is it’s beautiful. You would never be able to tell she was in prison. Somehow she’s managed to be perfectly lit. She’s a really interesting person. The more you listen, the more interesting you realize she is. And getting to hear her talk and watching the words come out of her mouth versus just hearing an interpretation of it or reading an article about it made a difference. It built the character for me. Watching her mannerisms and all that, it really built out the character for me. It also really helped Julia [Garner], though she also went and met her later. For the writers in the writers room, we were obsessive about that video.

You engaged Anna in the process, which I suspect also meant that she had and likely offered opinions about how and with whom the story should be told. How did you navigate that part?

I have no idea if she has a lot of opinions. I have to say, the video was it for us. I was like, “And we’re done,” because I knew we needed that separation of church and state. By the time she became a convicted felon, I was like, “We cannot tell a story if we are enmeshed in this world.” It also was really apparent that everybody else involved in the story was fully enmeshed in Anna. They all were so deeply tied up in her. I was like, “As writers, we’re not getting tied up in her.” We were working with [Anna’s friend] Neff and working with [her trainer] Kacy and we were talking to [her lawyer] Todd. So, it was great to have those conversations, but it was also important for us to keep a distance.

When Julia Garner decided that she wanted to meet Anna, how did you advise her and did you have concerns about how such a meeting could impact her performance?

Julia wanted to go and meet Anna, and Betsy Beers [Rhimes’ producing partner] and I debated for a while about whether or not it was a good idea. We debated, should we go? Because I’d spent so much time not going. But it became, “Would it make sense?” Part of me was like, I want to go to the Bedford Correctional Facility because I want to know what it’s like. As a writer, you want to immerse yourself so badly. But it just felt like this is not for me, this is still not a thing I need to do because, no matter what happens, I’m going to be the storyteller. But she really wanted to meet Julia and Julia really wanted to meet her, and I felt like it’s not going to be dangerous for Julia. It can’t hurt her to have this interaction, the scripts are already written.

And what’s really interesting about Julia is she might be one of the most intellectual actors I’ve ever met. I had this perception of her in my head from Ozark, but she’s a little brainiac. She came at it from a very psychological profile kind of place, and I was like, “She’s going to be fine. She’s not going to be one of those people who goes in there and comes back out, like, ‘Oh my God, this poor girl.'” She came back more, like, “I’ve got her accent, I’m good.”

How important was getting that accent right?

It’s the strangest accent in the world.

It really is.

It doesn’t reflect any one country, which was very, very difficult. That was another reason why seeing the video was important. I was stunned by the accent the first time I heard it. But what was good about that was it made me understand a little bit more why people fell for Anna. It’s this very unknowable pan-European thing that makes you go, “Well, maybe she could be from Germany?” Or, “I understand why some people think she’s from Russia.” It gave her this lost princess quality that allowed people to believe almost anything. Maybe she went to boarding school in Switzerland. It was that thing. That accent helped her get over in a lot of ways. It’s such a bizarre accent. Part of me wanted to do the thing where maybe we should show a little footage of the real Anna talking at the end, just so people can see how good Julia did that accent but that felt gratuitous.

At the top of every episode, you tell the audience that everything they are about to see is true except for the things that are totally made up. Where were the places where you felt you had to get this right, versus, saying, “You know what, I am a storyteller”?

It used to be that that was a voiceover by Anna and Vivian, where you would hear Anna say, “Everything in this story is completely true,” and then Vivian would say, exasperated, “except for the parts are totally made up.” Because Anna was creating this world in which she was like, “This is who I am and this is what my world is,” and Vivian was like, “Half of this crap is bullshit.” So, it became the perfect disclaimer, not because we were over-interpreting the facts but because we were dealing with direct interview statements from witnesses and interviews and transcripts, and I was like somebody, might say this is libel. Honestly, we really don’t know if it’s totally made up, but it’s what Anna said or it’s what The Futurist said. And there were some people who didn’t want to talk to us, so we had to piece things together from facts that we had and we had to create amalgamations of characters. We tried to stay as true as we could to the interpretation and the idea of what the truth was as we knew it to be, but I can’t tell you what the truth is because honestly these are just people’s versions of their stories about Anna.

Anna just published an article where she described her experience in prison and said she won’t be watching the series. What did you make the of the piece?

I thought it was brilliant in that she basically wrote an article that says, “Fuck you for being entertained by my pain,” which is so perfectly on brand for Anna in this moment. The same way her saying, “I think there’s nothing wrong with being a sociopath, being a sociopath is a good thing,” was perfectly on brand for that moment. She has no control or ownership of this, so she can create this, and it was beautifully written, by the way — this beautifully written narrative about her terrible experience being detained by ICE. And, as Jessica Pressler said to me, did she have to be detained by ICE? She could allow herself to be deported at any moment, but she refuses to be. So, it’s very on brand for Anna. Once again, as Jessica said to me, Anna Sorokin and Anna Delvey are two very different people: Anna Sorokin is a person and Anna Delvey is an invention, and that article felt like it was written by Anna Delvey.

I know we’re out of time, but are you really ready to say goodbye to this story?

I’ve been ready for a long time. Think about this: This happened in 2017, we started writing it in 2018, we started shooting it in 2019 and, because of the pandemic, we didn’t stop shooting it until 2021. I’ve been editing this thing for God knows how long. It’s very strange that something that we started so long ago is finally coming out.

Sure, but there are other people and stories within this one, and we’re living in a moment where, in success, series become universes, as Bridgerton has.

Well, it’s funny because Jessica’s been doing more research, she’s got like a book’s worth of stuff and, I got to tell you, I think there is way more to know. Those stories are endless. But for me, I’m ready to put it all to bed. I’m good. Although, I have to say, I’m obsessed with Neff and always dying to know what’s going to happen with her.

Interview edited for clarity.

Inventing Anna is streaming on Netflix.