Anna Sorokin, the convicted scammer who inspired the hit Netflix show Inventing Anna, called the 2022 series a case of art imitating life – and only doing a so-so job at that.
“I don’t think I sound like it,” she told CNN on Wednesday, speaking about actor Julia Garner’s performance as Sorokin on the show.
Sorokin told anchor Jake Tapper she’s hardly watched the show, and that at best her character on screen sounds like an earlier time in her life, when she was traveling around the world.
“She got me from the time before,” Sorokin added.
The infamous fraudster, who was convicted in 2019 of defrauding New York banks, hotels, and other institutions out of $2.75m, was released from prison in February of 2021. After being released from immigration detention last week, she is now on house arrest as she fights a planned deportation to Germany.
She apologised for her actions and said she hopes to move on and focus on a planned podcast and making artworks.
“I feel so sorry for a lot of the choices I’ve made,” she said. “I also feel like I’ve learned so much and grew as a person.”
Sorokins exploits as “Anna Delvey,” a fictitious persona she created to pose as a high-society New York influencer, have been exhaustively covered by tabloids, podcasts, documentaries, and of course Netflix.
In 2018, journalist Jessica Pressler wrote a widely read exposé on Sorokin for New York magazine’sThe Cut, the process of which is dramatised in the Netflix show.
Sorokin is not the only one to take issue with her portrayal in the Emmy-nominated series.
In August, former Vanity Fair staffer Rachel DeLoache Williams filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix, claiming that she was falsely depicted in the drama as “unethical,” “greedy,” “snobbish” and “disloyal.”
Ms Williams, a friend of Sorokin, says she was defrauded out of $62,000, and wrote a Vanity Fair article and book about the experience.
