For those of you who didn’t follow the saga of Anna Delvey (real name Anna Sorokin), here’s the basic gist: Born in Russia and raised in Germany, Anna moved to the United States in her mid-20s and convinced a bunch of very important New York City people that she was actually an heiress. She was then able to con those people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eventually she got caught, but her story was immortalized in a New York Magazine story that went viral. If you think this material sounds ripe for a Netflix TV show, you’re right! And actor Julia Garner knew that.
“When I found out they were going to make a series about it, I wasn’t surprised,” Julia said via Zoom in an interview with Cosmopolitan. She didn’t immediately see herself in the titular role of Anna though. “I was definitely surprised when I got cast, because I knew that I could play this type of person, but I didn’t know that Hollywood would cast me because I look so different from her.”
Below, Julia talks through how she approached playing Anna in Inventing Anna, how she met the real Anna in prison as prep for the show, and what she would say to her now.
None of us can speak for why Anna did what she did, but did you have any moments where you were like, “Okay, this is what I’m going to tell myself about why she did these things, and that’s going to help me play her as a character”?
That’s how I would describe it exactly. If there’s something that I don’t necessarily agree on when I’m reading a script, I can’t even think about that, that can’t even float around in the universe at that moment. Because you cannot judge your character. If you start judging your character, you shouldn’t be playing the character, because the camera doesn’t lie. The camera picks up everything. It picks up every little subtle movement. So you really have to believe in what you’re saying, and if it’s not coming from a genuine place and you’re just reciting lines, the performance isn’t going to be good.
What sort of conclusions did you come to about Anna specifically?
Anna did not want to fail, at all. She went to the nth degree so she wouldn’t fail in front of people, but she kept on digging herself in a deeper hole. And with the fear of failure, behind that is a deep-rooted fear of rejection. And behind the fear of rejection is not being okay with your identity. To me, that’s what the project is about. It’s about people struggling with their identity, with their self-worth, with the fear of failure.
Anna went to extremes, but I do feel like at the core of the character is something very relatable. We’ve all wanted to reinvent ourselves or we’ve been too scared to fail.
With Anna, you don’t have to necessarily like her or agree with what she did. But you have to be at least willing and open to and see and watch why she did what she did. That’s my job as an actor.
You were able to go visit Anna when you were prepping for this role. What about that experience was the most surprising for you?
I didn’t have the expectation of Anna answering certain questions because Anna’s very private. She doesn’t like showing her cards often, or actually, at all. I wanted to get her energy and her spirit and mirror that and put it in the show. And when I went there, they asked if I wanted a recording device or a notepad and I said no—I rejected all of that because I didn’t want her to feel like she’s being documented, because then she was instantly going to change and have a filter. And the thing that I got out of it was seeing her energy. I was so surprised by how bubbly she can be, how charming she is, and instantly, it made much more sense why she was able to have all those powerful people gravitate toward her.
In the show, we see Anna pick up and discard people as she goes because they start to catch on to what’s happening. Did you do anything on the set to distance yourself from your costars? Did you get method-y at all with it?
No. I like to know the people that I’m working with, and I like to know what their energetic tone is, and there can be a rhythm within the scene. And everybody was also just so lovely, all the actors. But also Anna was talking to all of them, so it wasn’t like I was going to isolate myself when Anna was, you know, hanging out with her girlfriends in Morocco, or whatever.
As a viewer of the show, my feelings about the Anna character really ebbed and flowed. How do you want people to feel about her by the time they finish the finale?
I want it to be exactly like that. I think all great art is contradicting itself. It should be talked about. Whether you like it or not, it should always be talked about.
I was watching the screeners over the holiday with my mom, and we had opposite reactions. I was like, “I’m so intrigued by how she pulled all this off.” And my mom was like, “I’m so intrigued by how she’s going to get caught.”
You can be intrigued by both. That’s really what it is. I mean, it’s intriguing. Why is she doing this? But also, how is she doing this? She’s 25 years old. It should be all the feelings.
I don’t know if you have any plans to talk to Anna now, but if you got the chance, is there anything you’d like to tell her?
If she does ever watch it, I hope she likes my portrayal. Obviously, that’s very stressful when you’re playing a real person. I hope the best for her, and I hope the best for everyone that this has happened to. It was a traumatic event for everybody in the story.
On The Tonight Show the other night, you were talking about your Ozark character and how you drew some inspiration from art, particularly Caravaggio. Did you have any visual references for Anna?
It’s interesting, because Anna’s a real person, right? My biggest inspiration for Anna was Anna. I had these taped interviews—they’re not online, I got them exclusively. So I was mimicking her voice or getting to really start with her dialect and with her different, like, how she moves her body, from those tapes. But also with the trial photos, really looking closely at those trial photos. So Anna was really my biggest inspiration for playing Anna.
