Inventing Anna on Netflix: Julia Garner found Anna Delvey ‘extremely charming’

When Ozark star Julia Garner first heard Anna Delvey’s story, she knew it was destined for the screen.

If there’s one thing double Emmy winner Julia Garner has in common with real-life conwoman Anna Delvey, it’s that they’re both dreamers.

“She came to New York because she had a dream of starting something and making something of herself,” Garner, who is best known for her role as Ruth on Ozark, told news.com.au of the woman she portrays in Netflix series Inventing Anna.

“I’m a professional, I play make-believe for a living. You can’t get more dreamer than that in a way. We definitely have that in common.”

Garner is not defending Delvey, also known as Anna Sorokin, whose extraordinary story was chronicled in a 2018 article in New York magazine, but she certainly has some insight into how so many of Manhattan’s glittering social elite were taken for fools by the Russian-born German woman who claimed to be an heiress.

Inventing Anna is streaming on Netflix. Picture: Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

“She’s extremely charming, she’s extremely bubbly, and that’s what makes it more conflicting,” Garner explained of her one meeting with Delvey, which took place in prison where Delvey is serving a four to 12-year sentence.

“It makes sense in a way, what she got out of those people.”

Those people are the elites, hotels and institutions such as banks that Delvey bilked for piles of cash, seducing them in the first place by flashing big money of her own. Money she never really had.

The story of how this seemingly unimpressionable woman got away with it – until she didn’t – became such a flashpoint when the New York article was released, it became the subject of a bidding war, one which uber TV producer Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton) and Netflix eventually won.

Julia Garner as Anna Delvey. Picture: David Giesbrecht/Netflix

Garner was among the readers who were enthralled by Delvey’s exploits.

“I had the same reaction: I was intrigued and fascinated. I felt all the things when I read it,” she said. “It was such an amazing story that it was kind of clear that it was going to become a movie or TV show the moment I read it.”

Garner expressed surprise that she was ever in contention for the role, let alone nabbing the lead – “I don’t look anything like her” – and praised Rhimes as the “perfect person” to tell this story.

In addition to Ozark, Garner is also known for critically acclaimed performances in The Americans and The Assistant. Picture: Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

But she was only able to meet Delvey the one time, citing Covid and the difficulty of access as reasons why she didn’t repeat the experience.

“I always wanted to meet her. Before I started the project, I had taped interviews with her from jail, I had footage from [the] Morocco [trip] and other footage too. That was all helpful when it came to the accent, or to physically get certain things she’s doing with her hair or her glasses.

“But I really wanted to meet her because I wanted to see how her energy was, and you can’t compare seeing someone face-to-face with watching them on your computer screen, watching an interview.”

Inventing Anna is on Netflix from Friday, February 10 at 7pm AEDT