Inventing Anna review: Netflix, Shonda Rhimes can’t top con artist’s true story

There are two main characters in producer Shonda Rhimes’ new Netflix miniseries Inventing AnnaBoth are based upon real people. First, Anna Delvey (played here by Julia Garner). She is a clever and mysterious con artist. Anna Delvey tricked several wealthy people and high-end institutions in New York City into thinking she was an aristocratic European fundraiser. She was born Anna Sorokin in Russia. After moving to London, Paris, Germany and London she found it easy to get into the circles of the rich and famous. After Jessica Pressler’s 2018 New York Magazine profile, she became an unrecognized celebrity.

This is the second most important character. Invention of Anna is Pressler … but not entirely. The show is officially adapted from Pressler’s article; and she’s one of its producers. Her character, played by Anna Chlumsky, has been changed to Vivian Kent. The magazine that she writes for now is Manhattan. While Vivian shares some biographical traits with Pressler — most notably the lingering sting of a big professional embarrassment — the name-change indicates that Vivian shouldn’t be seen as exactly the same person who wrote the New York story.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this switch. Movie and TV movie producers fiddle with the particulars of true stories all the time: for legal reasons, for poetic license, or because using the real person’s name and details might be intrusive. (Pressler’s not really a public figure, so it’s possible she insisted on the change.) It’d be unfair to criticize Invention of Anna based on how closely or not Vivian resembles her real-life inspiration, because that clearly isn’t what Rhimes and her team set out to do.

It’s worth noting How the character has been fictionalized, because that speaks to what the storyteller thinks makes for a compelling protagonist — and why a journalist’s life might need tweaking to be more “dramatic.”

Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix

Invention of AnnaVivian starts at a low professional level. Vivian, a former rising star made a mistake in a buzzy piece and lost a lucrative new job. She’s now hanging on by her fingernails at her old Manhattan job, stuck in a corner cubicle among the magazine’s unfashionable old-timers, where she half-heartedly chases whatever trendy story her editor assigns. She’s also heavily pregnant, but ignores the advice of her friends and husband to take early maternity leave, because she’s determined to regain her lost prestige.

The Anna Delvey story could be Vivian’s last big shot. This story is a perfect example of New York’s most iconic themes. It features an immigrant reimagining herself in a country of opportunity, the obsession with success and not true substance; as well as the destructive effects of FOMO envy in cities where people are. Always You can out-live someone else.

All of this material is great for Shonda Rhimes projects. Rhimes was best-known for the medical melodrama. Grey’s AnatomyShows from Shondaland that have had the greatest impact on her career include the shows of Scandal, How to get away with murderAnd BridgertonStories about how the rich can flex their power and how small-timers with grudges or guile can bring them down.

Invention of AnnaIt reflects a lot that Rhimes fans love about her work. Although the characters are not drawn cartoonishly, they’re rendered in an open and readable manner. Both the villains and heroes are multilayered. It shines on the surface, it is quick and snappy, with a cast that has levity. (Garner in particular seems to be having a lot of fun with Anna’s various bits of schtick: doing a thick Russian accent; mocking Vivian for her frumpiness; and philosophizing about how to be fabulous.)

Also, the plot is grabby and relies on hinting at mysteries. As Vivian digs into exactly what Anna did — and how she almost got away with it — Rhimes and her writers keep dropping hints that this story may be bigger than our intrepid reporter realizes, due to the many New York elites who’ll be humiliated by it. The series rather provocatively suggests that Anna could be seen as a kind of folk hero, using the mega-wealthy’s own snobbery against them.

Photo: Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

However, there are some flaws to be aware of. One of the most important is Invention of Anna’s ridiculous length. The majority of the nine episodes are over an hour long, while one episode is around 80 minutes. Frankly, there’s not enough in the source material to justify this. Though Pressler’s original article is what people in publishing call “a long read,” it’s still roughly the length of a short story. Rhimes, and his company, continue to publish the article after it was published in New York. To cover some of the next events, we are sorry Manhattan. You also get to know the characters better, as they explore their lives and conflict.

It’s here where the fictionalizing of a real-life journalist into “Vivian” becomes the most noticeable, as she becomes more The Hero In A Story and less A Person Who Actually Exists. From the beginning, Invention of Anna sets Vivian up as a reckless striver, taking a “better to apologize than ask permission” approach to her job. When her boss — rather inexplicably — doesn’t see the potential in the Anna Delvey piece and instead insists she keep working on a “Wall Street #MeToo” story, she ignores him, because she doesn’t see yet another expose of institutional sexual harassment as her ticket back to the big time.

A lot of research has been done on shoe-leather. Invention of AnnaVivian is chasing down interviews, gathering documentation, and filling the position of detective in an investigation. But rather than framing the Anna Delvey piece as Vivian’s opportunity to say something revealing about New York’s culture of fame and fortune, the article is shown more as a glittering prize she has to win, to silence her doubters and to compensate for her failures.

This particular way that Vivian’s character is centered in Invention of Anna recalls 2019’s Beautiful Day in NeighborhoodThe film featured Matthew Rhys as a fictional character, based on Tom Junod (the reporter who created the heart-tugging 1998). EsquireThe movie was inspired by an article on Mr. Rogers. The movie emphasized the faux-Junod’s personal problems and career struggles, rather than the multiple major awards the real-life writer had won. Similarly, the fictional Vivian doesn’t get to share Pressler’s biggest win: writing the article that was adapted into the hit 2019 movie HustlersThe Delvey piece is already being developed. Having the characters be well-respected and accomplished doesn’t make for a good story, apparently.

Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix

There are many gaps in between dramatic scenes. Idea of a journalist as a dogged pursuer of truth and the job’s actual grinding work are all too common in fiction. Freeform drama Bold TypeThis show featured some of today’s most realistic portrayals of journalism. Its cast consisted of fashion magazine staffers dealing directly with corporate bosses who are clueless and under the immense pressure of being positive on social networks. However, even this show was often disappointing. It is not the norm. Bold Type characters’ work day consisted of sitting around a fabulous downtown New York office in the morning talking about a Very Important Issue they wanted to tackle in the magazine, then dealing with self-doubt and internal political pressure all afternoon before late at night hurriedly knocking out a short column mostly written in first-person.

Granted, it’s not like cops, lawyers, or doctors — or really a member of any other profession — are typically portrayed accurately on-screen. But given that so many show business impresarios got their start as writers, it’s odd that they’re so often ungenerous to journalists as characters. Invention of Anna isn’t as egregious as some TV shows or movies where reporters lie, break laws and even sleep with sources to land a story. But as terrific as Chlumsky is in the role, her Vivian still tends to come across as shallowly obsessed with success — and not with, say, writing something as gripping, probing and impressively polished as Pressler’s actual Delvey article. Rarely is the work a goal in and of itself.

It’s remarkable too in the case of Invention of Anna that this story about a phony who fooled a bunch of New Yorkers — by crafting a familiarly appealing image — has itself been carefully constructed to be more conventional. The series doesn’t show much interest in understanding what a journalist actually does or why; it’s more about understanding the motivations of a generic underdog who’s fighting to right a personal wrong. In the end, both the main characters remain somewhat opaque, because they’re defined less by their specific goals than by the nebulous act of wanting.

[Disclosure: Vox Media, Polygon’s parent company, also owns New York magazine, which published the Anna Delvey article.]