By: Christopher James
Julia Garner brings to life viral sensation Anna Delvey in Shonda Rhimes' latest show "Inventing Anna."We have a long history of idolizing iconoclast grifters. From Robin Hood to Jesse James, there’s something alluring about an outlaw getting one over on the hoity-toity establishment. Perhaps this is why Jessica Pressler’s article about Anna Delvey in The Cut went viral when it came out in 2018. Delvey pretended to be a German heiress and conned her way to the top of New York society. She lived large in swanky hotels and on lavish Marrikesh vacations all without paying for a dime of it herself. This was never destined to last, and Delvey wound up in jail for her crimes.
Netflix’s Inventing Anna dramatizes Delvey’s exploits, with Emmy winner Julia Garner bringing her to life...
While Anna Chlumsky was fantastic on "Veep," her performance as Vivian bores compared to Garner's Delvey.
With Shonda Rhimes as creator, this feels like a recipe for success. Like most of Rhimes' shows, Inventing Anna is insanely watchable as it zips back and forth in time to cover her exploits. Unfortunately, it shortchanges Delvey’s kinetic energy by centering the story around Vivian (aka Jessica Pressler, played by Anna Chlumsky).
Though the title of the show is Inventing Anna, we instead start with Vivian, a disgraced New York journalist who thinks she has the next great scoop. She’s found out about a supposed German heiress who is sitting in jail for scamming and defrauding most of New York. This appeals to her much more than the #metoo story that her stuck up bosses have given her. Armed with her short temper and plucky elderly journalist friends (Anna Devere-Smith, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry), she convinces her editors to let her go to Rikers Island to visit the inmate, Anna Delvey, and craft a story about her.
If you’re wondering when we’ll get into all the nitty gritty details in Jessica Pressler’s article, you’ll have to be patient. Anna’s exploits are the subject of mere flashbacks for most of the first couple episodes. Once the show hands the reins over to Garner’s gonzo vision of Anna Delvey, it becomes the fast, pop sensation that we’ve come to expect from Shonda Rhimes. The two-time Emmy winner may have seemed like an odd choice on paper, but Garner perfectly demonstrates how Delvey could be repellant and charming in the same breath. Her aloofness and disdain only pulls people in closer, as if they’re trying to earn her respect. In many ways, she pulls the same trick with the audience. Garner’s accent is deliberately wonky, making us wonder whether the actress is doing a bad mimicry job or if Anna can’t actually keep up with her own lie. There’s a hollowness or fakeness to Anna that we can’t quite put our finger on, but that’s part of what makes her fascinating. She’s lying, but what is the truth?
That central question is the driving force for the show. Yes, by the end, definitive answers are provided. Unfortunately, there are too many other extraneous shows within Inventing Anna that distract from the scintillating details of the scam. The most egregious is the court battle that takes up the bulk of the final episodes. Most of the courtroom scenes exist just to give Anna’s lawyer, Todd (Arian Moayed), time to loudly pontificate as if he were on Boston Legal. The less said about his subplot as an absent husband to his Put Upon Wife™ (Caitlin Fitzgerald, so underused), the better. Narratively, the court case takes the show in the wrong direction. So much time is spent trying to determine Anna’s innocence or guilt, when that’s beyond the point. We know what she did and we have a pretty good idea why she did it.
"Inventing Anna" is best when it centers on Anna and the people she coerces into her schemes, such as (from left to right) Kacey (Laverne Cox), Anna (Julia Garner), Rachel (Katie Lowes) and Neff (Alexis Floyd).
The rest of the supporting cast in Anna’s orbit helps fill in who would be fooled by her and why. The strongest among them is Alexis Floyd who plays Neff, a whip-smart concierge at one of the hotels that Anna frequents. Even after all the media hubbub, Neff still remains a conflicted defender of Anna. It’s an interesting relationship that Floyd dramatizes well. We also see a group fractured when Vanity Fair photo editor, Rachel (Katie Lowes), and life coach, Kacey (Laverne Cox) go with Anna to Marrikesh in one of the more memorable episodes of the season. Kate Burton chews the scenery in her couple episode arc as Nora, a socialite who takes Anna under her wing.
As watchable as the show can be, one can’t help but see the better version lurking beneath the surface. Ultimately, Inventing Anna misses the point of what made Delvey’s story a viral sensation. The show clumsily retcons Anna Delvey into a misunderstood hero when really she was an outlaw. We don’t need to “like” Anna to want to follow her. The actions she takes don’t have to be considered “good” to be entertaining. We live in a new age of Insta-celebrity, and Anna Delvey is the embodiment that one person can con their way to the Insta-perfect life. The Fyre festival documentaries did a great job unraveling how the rich were fooled by filters and FOMO. Unfortunately, Shonda Rhimes’ latest is less critical and less entertaining. C
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