Ahead of the show’s premiere on February 11, the real-life subject of Inventing Anna revealed she won’t be tuning in to the Netflix limited series based on her life. Anna Sorokin, best known as Anna Delvey, talked about the upcoming show in a recent essay published by Insider, which she wrote from her current jail cell in upstate New York.
The Shondaland series from showrunner Shonda Rhimes follows the true story of the titular fake German heiress (played by Ozark‘s Julia Garner) as she conned New York’s elite social scene, scamming several out of thousands of dollars in her rise to wealth and fame. In April 2019, she was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, along with paying almost $200,000 in restitution.
This past February, she was released due to good behavior but has since returned to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, potentially facing deportation.
(Credit: Nicole Rivelli/Netflix)
“While the world is pondering Julia Garner’s take on my accent in Inventing Anna, a Netflix show about me, the real me sits in a cell in Orange County’s jail in upstate New York, in quarantine isolation,” she begins.
She states that in the process of paying back her restitution, she happened to overstay her visa. And despite her good behavior and following orders, she claims the government still deems her a “permanent threat to public safety.”
“So no — it doesn’t look like I’ll be watching Inventing Anna anytime soon. Even if I were to pull some strings and make it happen, nothing about seeing a fictionalized version of myself in this criminal-insane-asylum setting sounds appealing to me,” she said.
“For a long while, I was hoping that by the time Inventing Anna came out, I would’ve moved on with my life. I imagined for the show to be a conclusion of sorts summing up and closing of a long chapter that had come to an end.”
Delvey was initially paid $70,000 by Netflix for the series, as well as $15,000 per episode for her role as a consultant. Her original contract stated she would earn $7,500 in royalties per episode but she will no longer financially benefit from the series due to the enactment of New York’s “Son of Sam” law, preventing criminals from profiting off of works based on their crimes.
“Will I forever be judged by my early-to-mid 20s? Is there anything else I could possibly have done to close this chapter? Will I be stuck in a past not entirely of my creation without getting a chance to move on?” she concludes.
Inventing Anna, Series Premiere, Friday, February 11, Netflix
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