Every episode of Netflix’s Shondaland true-crime series Inventing Anna begins with the same useless disclaimer: “This whole story is completely true. Except for the parts that are totally made up.” But just how much of the series was fictional? In an interview this week with Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, recorded from an ICE facility in upstate New York, Anna Delvey herself set the record straight—sort of.
Cooper asked the fake German heiress, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, about a scene from episode eight of the show, when Anna has been caught in her crimes and flees to Los Angeles. While staying at the famed Chateau Marmont, Anna, played by Julia Garner, stages a suicide attempt by washing down handfuls of pills with alcohol, but calls room service to find her before she overdoses. As a result, she undergoes a 24-hour psych evaluation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and checks into a bougie rehab program.
As Cooper recounted the details of the episode, Delvey laughed in amusement. She said earlier that she had only seen “bits and pieces” of Inventing Anna, and it seemed as though she was hearing about this particular plot line for the first time. When Cooper asked if the suicide attempt actually happened, she replied with a definitive, “No. Absolutely not. No.” After a pause, she asked the host, “What kind of drugs was I supposed to do?” Cooper pressed one more time, asking, “So you never attempted suicide?” and again, Delvey kept her answer to a brief “No.”
Cooper and Delvey did not discuss the Netflix series much further, but they did talk about the infamous, over-the-top accent Garner deployed to play the role. “When I heard Julia talking like me the first time, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, do I sound this insufferable?’” Delvey said with a laugh. “It’s just so weird, like, hearing yourself. It’s the same when you just hear your voice being recorded, it’s totally different from the way you hear yourself when you speak.” (She does, however, want people to know that her accent is 100% real.)
The jury’s still out on whether Delvey’s time in prison changed her; she’s as committed to the VIP lifestyle as ever, enlisting fellow inmates as “assistants” to hand-wash her laundry. But she did kinda, sorta own up to some of her lies in her interview with Cooper. “Did you lie about your family’s background, or wealth, or how much money you had?” Cooper asked at one point. “I guess I did,” Delvey answered. “I mean, I cannot tell an exact instance, but I’m sure.” Then, backtracking slightly, she added, “But all of that, I never, like, told any senseless lies. Unless they were, like, a bank.” Sure, well, as long as you were only telling senseless lies to banks.
As to whether she considers herself a con artist or ever told anyone that she is a German heiress set to inherit a grand fortune, she denied both points. According to Delvey, she does not consider herself a con artist because she didn’t mean any harm by her actions. “I never, like, intended to permanently harm anybody, you know?” she told Cooper. “I literally cannot come up with a single example where I’m like, ‘Yeah, let me fuck this person over and they’ll never see their money ever again.’”
Delvey ended the interview on a semi-lighthearted note. Amid her deportation battle, the 31-year-old joked on Twitter, “willing to marry @kanyewest for US green card.” Referencing the tweet, Cooper asked if Delvey would actually consider dating the controversial rapper, especially now that he has dated Delvey’s pal from the New York City party scene, Julia Fox.
“That’s a tricky question. That was a joke, that Tweet,” Delvey replied. “I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to be getting the best reviews, so I don’t know.”
