Inventing Anna dramatizes the rise and fall of Anna Delvey, the real name Anna Sorokin, a young woman who convinced New York’s social and financial elite that she was a German heiress with a $60 million fortune. The series follows a journalist investigating Anna’s story while Anna awaits trial, bouncing between the reporter’s present-day digging and flashbacks to Anna’s elaborate cons. Shonda Rhimes’ production generated enormous viewership on Netflix, but community response settled firmly in the “entertaining but frustrating” camp.
The show opens with a disclaimer that the story is “completely true, except for the parts that are totally made up,” which sets a tone of playful irreverence that doesn’t always serve the material. Anna’s story is inherently fascinating: a young woman with no money, no connections, and a fake accent nearly built a $40 million arts foundation through sheer audacity. The question is whether nine episodes was the right container for that story. The consensus answer is no.
Julia Garner’s Magnetic Fake Heiress
Julia Garner’s Anna Delvey is the overwhelming reason people keep watching past the third or fourth episode. She commits fully to the character’s bizarre affect, the clipped pseudo-European accent, the imperious entitlement, the dead-eyed stare when someone fails to meet her standards, and finds genuine pathos beneath the performance without ever letting the audience forget that Anna is, fundamentally, a fraud. Garner makes her simultaneously repellent and fascinating, and viewers consistently report that every scene without her feels diminished.
The show is at its best when it focuses on the mechanics of Anna’s cons. Watching her manipulate banks, hotels, and socialites through a combination of confidence, manufactured urgency, and the reluctance of institutions to question anyone who looks wealthy enough, makes for genuinely compelling television. These sequences illuminate real vulnerabilities in systems built on social trust, and the show’s sharpest moments recognize that Anna exploited a weakness, not a strength, in the people around her.
The production values are high, and the New York social scene is rendered with glossy, aspirational energy that helps explain why Anna’s world was so seductive. The fashion, the restaurants, the hotels, all of it communicates the lifestyle Anna was selling and that everyone around her wanted to believe in.
Nine Hours for a Three-Hour Story
The most persistent criticism is the length. At nine episodes averaging over an hour each, the series stretches a relatively straightforward story to the breaking point. The journalist framing device, based on real reporter Jessica Pressler, consumes enormous amounts of screen time that many viewers felt could have been spent more effectively. Anna Chlumsky does what she can with the reporter role, but the character’s personal dramas feel disconnected from the story the audience actually tuned in for.
The show can’t decide whether it admires Anna or condemns her, and this ambivalence manifests not as sophisticated moral complexity but as tonal incoherence. One episode frames her as a girlboss antihero. The next shows the real damage she caused to people who trusted her. The series never commits to a perspective, which leaves viewers without an emotional anchor.
The supporting characters are drawn in broad strokes that reduce real people to types. Anna’s friends, each given their own flashback episode, come across as either naively complicit or cartoonishly gullible. The show repeatedly suggests that everyone who got conned was partly responsible for wanting to believe, which is an interesting argument undercut by how little depth the victims receive.
The pacing is a significant problem. Several middle episodes feel like padding, revisiting the same dynamics from slightly different angles without advancing the story meaningfully. Viewers consistently report that the show would have been significantly better as a tight six episodes, or even a feature film.
The Con That America Wanted to Believe
The most interesting thread running through Inventing Anna is the suggestion that Anna didn’t succeed because she was an exceptional con artist but because American society desperately wanted someone like her to exist. Banks, hotels, and venture capitalists fell for her not despite the holes in her story but because the idea of a glamorous European heiress investing in New York art and culture was too appealing to question. Anna’s real crime wasn’t deception. It was exposing how easily wealth is performed and how rarely that performance is challenged.
Should You Watch Inventing Anna?
If you’re fascinated by the Anna Delvey story and want to see Julia Garner’s impressive performance, it’s worth starting. Many viewers recommend watching the first few episodes and the final two while skimming or skipping the middle stretch. Completists and Shonda Rhimes fans will find enough to enjoy across the full run.
Skip it if you have low tolerance for bloated storytelling or if a show that can’t decide whether its protagonist is a villain or a hero will frustrate you.
The Verdict on Inventing Anna
Inventing Anna has one of the most inherently compelling stories in recent true crime television and one of the best performances in Julia Garner’s magnetic Anna Delvey. What it doesn’t have is the discipline to match its material. At nine overstuffed episodes, the series dilutes its strengths with a reporter subplot that drags, supporting characters that never develop beyond sketch-level, and a tonal confusion that prevents the show from saying anything definitive about the woman at its center. There’s a great limited series buried in here, just not at this length.