Infamous imposter heiress Anna Delvey gets the Netflix treatment

“It’s not a lie, if you believe it”. These words stem from the wonderfully warped mind of Seinfeld’s George Costanza, but the phrase could just as easily have been the credo of a real New York master of mendacity: Anna Sorokin.

Perhaps “real” isn’t the best word when discussing Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey. In 2019, the 20-something Russian — who had convinced Manhattan’s high society that she was a German heiress worth around $60mn — was found guilty of eight charges, including grand larceny in the second degree, having defrauded banks, hotels, and members of the glitterati of thousands. She pleaded not guilty, claiming she had done nothing wrong and manipulated no one. Details about her true identity remain sketchy, but it’s likely that “contrition” isn’t her middle name.

The story quickly transcended the exclusive circle in which it played out. Extensive media coverage was followed by a book, a podcast, a documentary and now a new nine-part Netflix dramatisation, Inventing Anna, created by Bridgerton showrunner Shonda Rhimes, and based on a 2018 long-read.

We begin with an opening narration, delivered — in an approximation of Sorokin’s peculiarly-cadenced, vaguely eastern European accent — by lead actress Julia Garner (Ozark). “This whole story is about me . . . you know me . . . everyone knows me,” she says. But of course, nobody actually knew her. An amusing montage in the first episode sees her closest confidants provide entirely contradictory impressions of all facets of Sorokin’s life to the journalist investigating the case.

She is Vivian Kent (Veep’s Anna Chlumsky), a reporter at the fictional Manhattan magazine who inveigles an initially reluctant Sorokin to offer an exclusive by promising to make her an icon. From then on the series tracks Kent’s efforts to uncover concrete information about her elusive subject.

Interspersed throughout are flashbacks that reveal and revel in Sorokin’s chameleonic talents, which allowed her to persuade everyone from old money philanthropists to tech disrupters that she belonged among them. While she’s hardly the Robin Hood “folk hero” her lawyer presents her as, it’s hard not to enjoy observing such a skilled (con) artist at work.

But where Inventing Anna is buoyed by the levity and high camp of it all, it struggles more in its attempts at gravitas, not least in some heavy-handed reflections on whether the imposter is any less authentic than her peers, or less self-interested than the journalist. Still, the series can only be seen as a worthwhile endeavour given that the healthy advance Sorokin was paid by Netflix for the rights has reportedly gone some way toward repaying her debts.

★★★☆☆

On Netflix from February 11

Follow @ftweekend on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first