Anna Delvey discusses Inventing Anna’s Julia Garner visiting her in prison: ‘She is a very sweet girl’

Real-life scammer and actor met once in prison

Anna Delvey has praised Julia Garner, the actor who portrays her in the hit Netflix show Inventing Anna.

In the true-crime series, Ozark actor Garner plays scammer Anna Delvey (real name Anna Sorokin) – a twenty-something socialite who successfully posed as a rich German heiress in New York City.

Sorokin conned friends and big banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars before she was convicted of fraud and grand larceny.

At her trial in 2019, Sorokin was found guilty of swindling more than $200,000 (£147,000) from hotels, banks and other institutions. She scammed further sums of money from associates and friends whom she met under false pretences.

She was convicted in 2019 and released from prison in February 2021. Shortly after her release, Sorokin was taken into custody by ICE for violating the terms of her visa. She remains in ICE custody and faces deportation back to Germany.

Appearing on the latest episode of the Forbidden Fruits podcast, Sorokin said of Garner: “She was very nice. She came to see me… and she is a very sweet girl.”

Sorokin said she and Garner only met once, and she asked the actor to attempt her accent – a mixture of American, German and Russian.

“It’s just so weird, because the way you hear yourself – like your voice is just completely different when you hear yourself on TV,” she said. Podcast co-host Julia Fox said she rated Garner’s impression of Sorokin’s accent as a six out of 10, adding: “She did a little too much. Yours is a little more subtle. She really dove into the accent.”

Julia Garner in ‘Inventing Anna’ (Netflix)

Defending Garner, Sorokin said: “She was portraying me from like, 2015, 2016, 2017. So now I’ve spent the past four years just in the States. I was surrounded by Americans so maybe my accent was different.”

In February, Sorokin wrote an open letter about her feelings towards the show, in which she stated: “Even if I were to pull some strings and make it happen, nothing about seeing a fictionalised version of myself in this criminal-insane-asylum setting sounds appealing to me.

“I was hoping that by the time Inventing Anna came out, I would’ve moved on with my life. I imagined for the show to be a conclusion of sorts summing up and closing of a long chapter that had come to an end.”

She added: “Nearly four years in the making and hours of phone conversations and visits later, the show is based on my story and told from a journalist’s perspective.

“And while I’m curious to see how they interpreted all the research and materials provided, I can’t help but feel like an afterthought, the sombre irony of being confined to a cell at yet another horrid correctional facility lost between the lines, the history repeating itself.”

Responding to Sorokin’s comments, Garner said: “I respect whatever Anna does in terms of whether she wants to watch the show or doesn’t want to watch the show.

“That’s her choice and that’s totally fine. She doesn’t have to watch the show.”