Netflix recently released the full season of “Inventing Anna”, which should be the long-awaited work of many viewers: a scam that shocked New York society.
A bunch of familiar faces from American TV series starred; or the famous Shonda Rhimes as the main creator, no matter how you look at it, it will not be ugly.
Indeed, “Inventing Anna” is well-made and very watchable.
“Inventing Anna” is based on a true story about a young Russian-German girl who tricks the whole of New York’s upper class into a spin.
Anna Delvey, aka Anna Sorokin, is a mysterious figure in New York social circles.
No one knows where she came from, only that she comes from a wealthy German family, has great taste, and has a trust fund of up to 60 million euros.
Anna became friends with many of the most powerful people in New York’s high social circles.
Anna was arrested in 2017, eventually convicted of grand theft and fraud, and released in February 2021.
But after six weeks, she has been imprisoned by ICE and is likely to eventually be deported to Germany.
Anna has only been in prison for less than four years, which is nothing compared to the waves she has made in New York social circles.
From the perspective of a reporter, this play slowly and completely shows the image of Anna Delvey/Anna Sorokin from the side.
Vivian, a reporter for Manhattan Magazine, stumbled across news of Anna Delvey’s detention.
Intuition tells her that there is a big story in it, so Vivian ignores the objection of her boss and starts to investigate this mysterious Anna Delvey.
At that time, it was just a small piece of news that was not noticed by many people. All the rich people who had contact with Anna kept their mouths shut, for fear that the matter would become a big shame.
Anna is portrayed as a superficial young liar who stumbles into a circle that doesn’t belong to her.
Vivian felt that things were never that simple. She went to the prison to face Anna directly, and through the rich people Anna had been with along the way, she slowly began to understand what was going on with this mysterious character.
From 2013 to 2017, in the short four years Anna was in New York, she met countless wealthy people in the upper class of New York.
Everyone has been hot with Anna at some point, but no one really knows the real Anna.
Although Anna claims to have a trust fund of 60 million euros, she will be able to manage it herself when she is 25 years old.
But during these years in New York, she herself has never had money, but there are always people who pay for her, and therefore she is accepted by the wealthy circle of New York who is actually quite xenophobic.
Of course, everything is a castle in the air, and the final collapse will only take a moment.
This drama can be regarded as a two heroine drama, the story is from the perspective of reporter Vivian.
Vivian used to have a bright future, but a bad report forced her to do side-by-side stories, and she was even assigned to a group of old reporters who were about to retire.
Anna’s story did not attract Vivian’s bosses’ attention, and even thought that she was not doing her right job at all.
But intuition tells Vivian that this is a big breakthrough enough to make his career.
Vivian’s report on Anna was largely out of selfishness, but it was also because of this situation that she was not valued and despised at work, so that Anna had some kind of sympathy for her.
So “Inventing Anna” not only tells the story of a liar, but also tells how difficult it is for women who want to make a breakthrough in the jungle of New York.
Anna needs a loan of up to $40 million in order to start her own art foundation.
Although she knows all the people she should know, she perfectly presents the image of a “European rich heir”.
But she soon discovered that in a world dominated by men, a young woman like her would not be taken seriously.
To a certain extent, it was this prejudice that in turn became Anna’s tool to persuade these “old white men”.
In fact, Anna Delvey’s story immediately reminded me of WeWork founder Adam Neumann.
In fact, the two of them came to New York with nothing, and dreamed of breaking out into the sky. They both had big dreams that seemed unbelievable to ordinary people.
But the difference is that Adam Neumann’s “scam” is based on reality. Although this reality is small compared to his dream, it has some foundation.
More importantly, Adam Neumann entered the Jewish circle of New York, met the real rich wife Rebekkah, and entered the real circle of Jewish real estate dealers in New York, which made it really big.
Anna is different. Her former boyfriend Chase is the founder of a Silicon Valley technology company. All her living expenses were once in charge of Chase.
If Chase’s business is successful, Anna may have actually started her foundation today and really lived the rich life she thought she deserved.
However, Chase is actually a “liar”. His technology company has no technology at all, and the money he raised was quickly burned out in the squandering with Anna, so naturally he could not provide Anna with the life she wanted.
In fact, they are all typical hustlers who expect to Fake it till you make it, but Adam Neumann succeeded and earned a lot of money for several lifetimes, while Anna Delvey did not, and went to prison and became a prisoner.
In addition to Anna’s story, Vivian’s story in the play is actually very interesting, creating the image of a flesh-and-blood investigative reporter.
In reality, it was The New York magazine reporter Jessica Pressler who broke Anna’s story.
Her investigative report “The Hustlers at Score” was adapted into the film “Hustlers” in 2019.
It was a court photographer who I knew while doing this story who told Jessica Pressler about Anna’s story.
In the play, Vivian redeemed her career because of her report on Anna, and off-screen Jessica Pressler also redeemed a similar career dilemma because of Anna’s report, and successfully sold the story to Shonda Rhimes, which can be described as fame and fortune.
Therefore, this play is watching the collapse of the empire that Anna made up, and watching Vivian slowly succeed.
Of course, as with all stories like this, the audience’s biggest question is, how on earth can these apparently wealthy people believe in such a girl who came out of nowhere?
Those “ordinary people” who were deceived by Anna in the play are understandable. Who can stand such a $100 and $100 tip to throw out, eat with big people that they have only seen in the media, and even take themselves on a trip abroad. what about rich friends?
After all, ordinary people really don’t know what the life of the rich is like.
But why do the rich get fooled?
You must have heard the classic “Bill Gates looking for a son-in-law” joke, right? In fact, Anna’s story is almost like this, basically it is a white wolf with empty gloves.
First create a rich person’s character for yourself, let the ambitious little people in the rich social circle notice you, and then slowly get to know the real players through these little people.
As long as there is a real player who introduces herself to the circle, anyone she meets even if it is only a one-sided relationship can be used by her as a tool to meet new friends, and new friends she just met can be used by her to report a name to meet More new friends.
Slowly, this circle will delusion that she really belongs to this circle.
The portrayal of some of the wealthy New Yorkers in the play is interesting.
The reason Anna’s story went unnoticed at first was because the rich who got scammed would rather lose money than make a sound of being stupid.
As mentioned above, Adam Neumann succeeded because he climbed the really rich, and Anna didn’t.
Not to mention Anna, who actually has no money, even if it is new money, it is not so easy to get into the super snobbish New York rich circle.
They sometimes seem generous and generous, such as letting Vivian, who came to interview, stay overnight in their mansion.
But they will be very frankly angry about being used. For example, Anna and her boyfriend Chase were invited to be guests on the yacht, but they stayed there for several days after the owner left without saying a word, so they were caught by a rich friend Sever the relationship.
In the play, a small person in the upper circle tells Vivian that these rich people can see from all the details whether you belong to their circle or not.
You think expensive clothes, expensive bags, in their eyes, you can know the level of matching at a glance, and so on.
This is not a circle that will open its arms and embrace new people, money may not be enough (see the recent “The Gilded Age”), let alone Anna who has no money.
The play shows two worlds, two groups of victims.
Victims of the rich privately complained, at most expelling Anna from their social circles, but a few “ordinary” victims were different.
Rachel is portrayed as a worse image than Anna herself.
An ordinary writer who came to New York, although he worked in the famous Vanity Fair, he was just a completely unknown character.
After accidentally meeting social circle celebrity Anna and even becoming her good friend, Rachel was flattered and without a doubt she became Anna’s closest circle.
She let Anna take her to and from high-end places with peace of mind, asked Anna to pay the bill, accepted Anna’s expensive gifts, and even went abroad with Anna for a super expensive vacation.
She believed Anna’s lies and had to take out her company credit card to pay for it. When Anna didn’t pay the money, she called the police, which became the beginning of the collapse of Anna’s entire scam.
But then she sold the story of “good friend” Anna to Vanity Fair, selling the book and TV rights of the story, making a lot of money.
In the eyes of outsiders, isn’t this a villain who wants to climb up the rich and friends, steal chickens without losing money, and can’t wait to turn his face and sell his friends’ privacy to make money?
Opposite to Rachel, one of the other two ordinary victims tried to exonerate Anna until the end, while the other found Anna guilty, but despised what Rachel had done.
As for the wealthy victims? By this stage they had completely disappeared, as if they wanted to wipe the whole thing out of Anna.
Therefore, several ordinary victims in the play can easily find the prototype, and some of them have not even changed their names.
But the rich victims are a collection of stories of many different characters, completely original, making it impossible to guess which rich people became Anna’s victims.
For the public, Anna deceived a group of rich people and a group of greedy people. What’s the point?
In general, I really have to admire how powerful Anna is. She easily makes people in the rich circle think she belongs to that circle.
Her clothes, her taste in art, it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t born into a wealthy family.
However, the reality is that she was born in an ordinary Russian-German family with ordinary family background and ordinary parents.
She was neither rich nor criminally abused, but she grew into one of the greatest female liars of all time.
In the whole play, Anna hardly ever told the truth, as if she had already lied to herself, so that even if Anna’s story was reported, Vivian still doubted, “Will Anna be telling the truth, she really What about a rich dad?”
After confirming that Anna doesn’t have a rich dad, Vivian tries to find out the reason why Anna became Anna, but it doesn’t.
As Anna’s mother said, some children have similar souls to their parents, but some children are strangers under the same roof.
Some things just don’t have a “why”.
Anna, who is now in ICE custody, posted an article in the press when the show started, but instead of explaining how she tricked herself into New York high circles, she discussed her experience in ICE prison.
It is reported that Netflix paid Anna more than three hundred thousand dollars for the filming of the show, which she used to pay fines and compensate victims.
I would like to commend Julia Garner’s acting skills here.
I just finished watching “Ozark” not long ago with her mouth full of white trash accents from the American countryside, and here I immediately switch to English with a Russian accent.
Her superficial self-confidence and fragility are revealed from time to time. In fact, she really wants to be rich, but she has to hide her incompetent inferiority complex. Her performance is quite good.
The show is pretty good, most of the plots have realistic foundations and prototype characters, but the whole story is still bizarre and unreal.
Related Post: Netflix’s new drama “Inventing Anna” released Official Trailer and posters, deceived celebrities in New York!
