Here's How Anna Delvey Was Able To Watch Inventing Anna In ICE Custody
She originally said she wouldn't be able to see the series.
Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey, is finally revealing her true feelings about the Netflix series about her life. The Shonda Rhimes-produced Inventing Anna, which released on Netflix on Feb. 11, chronicles the scandalous story of how Sorokin claimed to be a German heiress and allegedly scammed New York’s elite out of thousands of dollars between 2013 and 2017. But has Sorokin/Delvey seen Inventing Anna? And what does she think about it?
After being convicted of eight felony charges in 2019, Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay restitution. She was released for good behavior in February 2021 but was arrested six weeks later by ICE for overstaying her visa. She’s remained in ICE custody since then.
On Feb. 2, Insider published an open letter penned by Sorokin in which she opens up about Inventing Anna, which stars Julia Garner as Anna and is based on Jessica Pressler's New York magazine profile about the scandal. She opened the letter: “While the world is pondering Julia Garner’s take on my accent in Inventing Anna, a Netflix show about me, the real me sits in a cell in Orange County's jail in upstate New York, in quarantine isolation.”
Sorokin claimed in the letter that her visa overstay was "unintentional and largely out of my control," but because of it has “yet to be given a clear and fair path to compliance.” Due to her continued stay in ICE custody, she didn’t expect to watch the show about her life. “It doesn't look like I'll be watching Inventing Anna anytime soon,” she wrote. “Even if I were to pull some strings and make it happen, nothing about seeing a fictionalized version of myself in this criminal-insane-asylum setting sounds appealing to me.”
Although Garner and Rhimes visited Sorokin in order to prepare for the series, Sorokin questioned how Inventing Anna would turn out. "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," Sorokin wrote in her letter. "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 somber irony of being confined to a cell at yet another horrid correctional facility lost between the lines, the history repeating itself."
However, Delvey was able to pull some strings and watch at least some of Inventing Anna while in ICE custody at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York. While in a virtual interview with Cosmopolitan, she watched a few scenes with a reporter via tablet. So, does she feel different about the show now that she’s seen it?
It seems like it. “It’s weird to watch your own life owned by somebody else,” told Cosmo, referencing the reported deal she made with the show creators to sell her life rights for $320,000. “It’s a good exercise in letting go.”
It seems like Sorokin is ready to move on from her past, but she’s been unable to do so because of her extended detainment. “For a long while, I was hoping that by the time Inventing Anna came out, I would've moved on with my life," she wrote in her Insider letter. "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."
Inventing Anna is streaming on Netflix.
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