Inventing Anna [2022]

Netflix’s Inventing Anna is an ethical mess wrapped up in a glamourous limited series by Shonda Rhymes.

Before watching this show, I didn’t know who Anna Sorokin is or what’s her story. Yes, I was living under a rock. But by the end, I really hated how the Shonda Rhymes show treated the story. In fact, the show is less about Anna and her motivations, and way more about the article in New York titled “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People” by Jessica Pressler, portrayed by Anna Chlumsky as Vivian Kent.

First, and before we dive into the details, kudos to Julia Garner for nailing her assignment. Yes, sometimes I felt like hitting the screen, but that’s what you’re supposed to do when the actor nails their character.

Now to the juicy details. The episodes become more intriguing as you go, and each are peppered with a host of recognizable Shondaland thesps, which I loved. However, the last two episodes are just a disappointing mess. It was too easy to watch the first half of the show, with Kent trying to balance being pregnant with doing her assignment. We get to see what Anna actually did via fancy flashbacks that looked more like a scene from Sex and the City.

However, the last act of the show is just a mess. Instead of continuing on the journalistic point of view, the show suddenly switches gears to try to defend Anna’s actions. Which is weird. As a fan of Shonda Rhyme’s productions, the moral compass is severely fucked up in this show. Inventing Anna‘s failure is in the framing of Delvey’s story: It’s depicted as a quasi-feminist, girlboss-adjacent revenge fantasy.

Instead of raising the bar to match Rhyme’s Scandal, or Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler, or even a plain old documentary like TINA, the show settles in for an utterly bingeable bit of fluff about a woman who is never quite who she claims to be.

Should you watch it?

In trying to make the show about gossip and the media, Inventing Anna actually misses whatever it is that Anna herself was up to and rather focused on what she thought she was doing. Instead of adding complexity, it just comes off as muddled.

Where can I watch it?

You can stream Inventing Anna exclusively on Netflix.