Julia Garner on How She Mastered That Strange Accent for ‘Inventing Anna’

Even by the skyscraper-high standards of New York City, Anna Delvey lived an enviable life: designer clothes from Bergdorf Goodman, lavish vacations abroad, private jets.…

All of which she scammed, lied, or stole to get. See, Anna was not a German heiress with a $60 million trust fund as she claimed. She was a con artist who bilked members of Manhattan society out of cash and services while seeking investors for a multimillion-dollar private club she hoped to build. Inventing Anna dramatizes the headline-grabbing true story about the glamorous, enigmatic criminal. She’s “a woman who knew where she wanted to end up,” executive producer Betsy Beers says, “and was willing to do whatever it took to get there.”

Aaron Epstein/Netflix

Emmy winner Julia Garner (Ozark) stars as Anna in this soapy tale of deceit, power, and status. “Anybody would find this story interesting,” says Garner, relaxing in a velvet chair on a break from filming in the lobby of La Mamounia in Marrakech, Morocco. The palm tree-lined resort, once a favorite of Winston Churchill, is one of the actual spots where the real Anna stayed but couldn’t afford to pay; filming there was important, says Beers, because it takes viewers inside her world.

In costume as Anna — a chic, flowy black dress and long auburn wig — Garner bears an uncanny resemblance to the real deal. “Like Anna, [Julia] is a chameleon,” says Beers. She’s such a doppelganger, in fact, the actress even jokes that her appearance freaked out the La Mamounia staff: “I’m back!” she says with a laugh.

Garner is a natural for the title role. She’d been fascinated ever since reading the 2018 New York magazine article on which the series is based. “I was like, ‘[Someone is] definitely going to make this into a movie or TV show,’” she recalls thinking. That person was Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes, who fleshes out the saga into an ensemble piece about not only Anna but her marks, her former friends, and the journalist (Anna Chlumsky, Veep) in pursuit of the story. While many characters are based on real people, others are fictional: A disclaimer at the start of each episode — a nod to the irreverent tone — tells viewers it’s a true story “except for all the parts that are totally made up.”

Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

The series unfolds in multiple timelines: In the present, the journalist, Vivian Kent, interviews Anna in prison pretrial and others connected to the story. As they dish, flashbacks show how Anna did her dirty work — finagling an invite onto a yacht in Ibiza, pushing the buttons of potential business connections, dropping $100 tips like discarded gum wrappers. The grifter is surprisingly abrasive — she asks Vivian if she’s pregnant or “just so very, very fat” — and it helps. “The bluntness is part of her superpower,” says Beers. “No one she conned ever felt like they were being manipulated, because she was, ironically, very honest with people about what she thought about them.”

And while Anna fooled others, she fooled herself as well. “From my understanding, she wasn’t planning on not paying people back,” says Garner, who visited Anna in prison. “She just didn’t pay people back because she didn’t have money. She was delusional, in a way.” (Delvey, who spent more than three years in custody for fraud, was released in 2021.)

Related

'Inventing Anna,' 'Pam & Tommy,' and More True Stories Coming to TV in 2022

Indeed, Anna, who was actually Russian by birth and whose real last name is Sorokin, spoke in a strange accent that added even more mystery to her. “When I first heard it, I was like, ‘What the heck is this?’” recalls Garner, who describes it as a blend of Russian and German with a dash of “I don’t want to say Valley Girl, but more American” mixed in. It’s no wonder, then, that one character asks Anna in exasperation, “Who the [bleep] are you?”

That’s exactly what Vivian is determined to find out. “She has that bloodhound personality,” says Chlumsky. As the journalist digs deeper, she develops a reluctant respect for Anna’s schemes — and viewers likely will too. Says Chlumsky, “It doesn’t mean we agree with the moral choices of a person to go, ‘Dang, you’ve got some nerve.’”

Some? If nerve were currency, Anna Delvey would be the richest person on the planet.

Inventing Anna, Series Premiere, Friday, February 11, Netflix