(Spoilers for Netflix’s Inventing Anna will be found below.)
Inventing Anna is a dramatization of the real-life story of Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. “Anna Delvey.” It’s heavily inspired by Jessica Pressler’s New York magazine profile called “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People.” Shondaland did this story up to showcase the dastardly financial deeds of Delvey, who is now languishing in ICE custody on a visa violation after serving time at both Rikers Island (19 months) and Albion Correctional Facility (21 months following her sentence, beginning in 2019).
What happened to all of the people that Anna defrauded, though? There are bankers and investors and hotel chains and friends, all of whom made the mistake of loaning money to a master con artist. Let’s talk about where a few of these defrauded and/or tricked people are these days:
– Rachel DeLoache Williams (portrayed by Katie Lowes): Oh, Rachel. She’s the character who wrote up her story in Vanity Fair (this really happened) and who ended up in truly dangerous, intense, arms-of-the-chair-gripping circumstances in Morocco after Anna failed to come through with any sort of luxury-resort payment card. Rachel ended up putting expenses on both her personal and professional credit cards, which caused her problems in both arenas. Most recently, she penned a TIME editorial about how she felt that the Netflix show was a mistake, and in doing so, she declared that she’d optioned her own story to HBO.
– Kacy Duke (portrayed by Laverne Cox): The take-no-prisoners personal trainer to the rich and famous, and she’s still doing her thing. Unlike Rachel, Kacy ended up leaving Morocco before the sh*t really hit the fan, and sure, she ended up helping Anna in a few smaller ways (compared to Rachel), and at this point, she appears to hold no sympathy for her former friend’s plight. Kacy’s still personal training and basically living her best life. In other words, she got off the Anna train while the getting was good.
– Neff (portrayed by Alexis Floyd: Neff’s real-life name is Nefferati Davis, and she’s the hotel clerk that was incredibly connected and enjoyed when Anna “made it rain” with all of those $100 tips. She befriended Anna while working at the Soho’s 11 Howard hotel, and to this date, Neff and Anna remain friends. That’s sort-of to be expected, given Neff’s defiantly supportive stance throughout the show, but girl, be careful.
– Billy McFarland (portrayed by Ben Rappaport): You vaguely know the name. This is the grifter responsible for the ridiculous Fyre Festival of 2017. In 2018, he received a six-year prison sentence and later landed his butt in solitary confinement for starting a tell-all podcast. And he and Anna totally deserved each other, even if the limited series showed that she wasn’t too impressed by him at all. I guess it takes one to know one?
Inventing Anna is streaming on Netflix.
