If Shondaland were a real theme park as its name implies, Inventing Anna would be the new strange ride that is different from others in the park; not really a rollercoaster, not quite the tunnel of love. Rhimes has become a legendary showrunner leading up to this series with credentials that have been revered and catapulted her amongst today’s’ television royalty which includes Ryan Murphy, Michael Schur and Chuck Lorre.
Mainstream as we know it will never be the same again; through Private Practice, Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder and even Grey’s Anatomy (which is still going on despite its creator’s inexplicable refusal to put the show out of its misery), she has bestowed artistic credibility onto cheesy melodrama, made politics fun way before Trump came along and gave voices to creative people of color. She is surely part and parcel of popular culture lexicon.
However, particularly since 2014 or so when there was an over production of one-season shows which seemed to slow her down for many years now she hasn’t exactly been a critical darling. This was all why her Netflix exclusive partnership announcement in 2017 (involving $100 million) was so exciting. On one hand you had a maker who could push limits and draw literally tens of millions viewers while having also come to be seen as synonymous with network TV censorship and executive oversight. The Netflix deal provided her with an opportunity to move into streaming’s lawless Wild West where nearly anything goes thus revealing what kind of filmmaker she really was.
Apparently, they liked what they saw in Bridgerton — lavishness. In just three months after launch Bridgerton became watched by 82 million households around the world making it the most viewed series in 76 countries at once renewed for three more seasons (the second premieres March 25). And Bridgerton? That would definitely happen only after Inventing Anna premiered on February 11. Rhimes’ showrunner for which she wrote, created and produced it.
The viewer is instantly expected to hate this woman and her combination of speaking (which another individual dubs a “creepy f accent”) only makes it worse because she sounds like part German, some Russian, a tad Australian and a bit Borat. It is undoubtedly one of the most irritating things about a character who has been portrayed as the cancerous tumor that spread chaos in our digital era.
Anna Delvey (initially named Anna Sorokin) is a real person, just as Inventing Anna is based on the same-named 2018 New York Magazine article by Jessica Pressler (“Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It: How an Aspiring ‘It’ Girl Tricked New York’s Party People — and its Banks”). This title pretty much gives away the whole story; it is about a dubious imposter with mysterious origin that posed as a European heiress swindling many social media narcissists in NYC.
In addition, Inventing Anna’s finest-most terrible decision was casting Julia Garner as the character of Anna Delvey (one cannot honestly decide which). Do not be deceived; this two-time Emmy-winning actress remains one of the most dazzling and captivating performers today. Her breakthrough performances in horror film We Are What We Are and the glacially paced but astonishing series The Americans were what got her noticed, while her brilliant acting in Ozark coupled with her underrated work on The Assistant sealed her star status.
Her performance in Inventing Anna is also enthralling enough to merit attention, though for reasons often counterintuitive to Rhimes’ show success. This makes the Los Angeles Times call it “a top hate-watch,” because portraying such a character well without pissing off viewers would be nearly impossible. However, unlike other successful antihero dramas like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, there is not much likableness toward protagonist Delvey nor are we able to cheer for her at any given time.
This seems to have been done intentionally. Starting from the above mentioned first sentence and up until all other scenes where Delvey appears (and she has quite a number of them), she comes across as mean, sociopathic, annoying and just plain bad. That woman is akin to an empty shell devoid of whatever sparks human life. Looking great while making money, being a boss and showing off to everyone is her main aim. At the same time, she is also the embodiment of everything that is wrong with an individualistic society’s embrace of ‘the queen’ or ‘the diva.’ She represents how it would look if all someone cared about was ‘living their truth,’ but never having any interest in anyone else’s truth, especially when your own happens to be being rich, hot or famous.
Throughout it all Garner remains unfazed and unshakeable; she gives herself completely to the role of a mean character with gusto. Yes there are moments where she adds vulnerability and self-doubt but for much of her time as this part she comes across like a malfunctioning robot. In less than five minutes she can go from rage monster to sobbing innocent and still manages to add so much depth into a character who hardly does anything at all throughout the entire storyline. Her broken moments almost mock the audience, daring them to take her seriously even though they cannot help but suspect that each emotion on display may be false.
The Delvey Show characters and plot which exist tangentially are such a relief from hate watching Anna, and luckily most of the people involved are down. Chlumsky is the audience’s surrogate, playing a reporter who investigates Delvey’s story and unearths scores of her victims, accomplices, friends, and bewildered spectators. The delightful energy that Chlumsky had in Veep is still there but much less jadedness although she accomplishes the same ‘underestimated woman working her butt off but surrounded by men who don’t believe in her’ portrayal as on the HBO comedy.
Laverne Cox is also great at doing essentially the same thing she often does in shows like Orange is the New Black — a strong, fierce woman who is a kind soul but can have some powerful anger beneath her New Age leanings. With or without most of the other actors surrounding them Inventing Anna has an okay cast that will work just fine but never really overshadows Garner who dominates it instead. Partly because of this script Rhimes herself began with an obvious pilot delighting in how many people this con artist duped (and eventually gives way to Garner).
The script’s flashback, journalistic story pieces together conflicting accounts of Anna and the time leading up to her arrest (Krupnick) tracing her meteoric rise and fall through high society as emblematic of modern culture’s occasional vapidity and plastic emptiness. In that sense Inventing Anna almost feels like a Shondaland Citizen Kane only instead of “Rosebud,” Delvey wants Dior.
Garner and the script combine to make a rather weird outlier in Shonda Rhimes’ continuing catalog. It has some of Rhimes’ trademark snarky workplace humor mixed with contemporary music playing softly in the background while fiery women or people of color take center stage trying their best at work even if sometimes it ruins their relationships with each other. What Inventing Anna doesn’t have is the same soapy pacing, romance, and melodrama that has attracted millions to take a ride in Shondaland. The series tries to build some stakes and momentum by making Chlumsky’s journalist increasingly pregnant, trying to finish the article before her water breaks in an odd race against the clock; but it only really detracts from ‘The Delvey Show.’
Considering this is a well-made and constructed Shonda show there is actually surprisingly little tension and melodrama here. It takes its time – each episode focuses on a different character being interviewed or talked about as they stroll through Delvey’s past with all the languor of walking through an upscale VIP beach resort. It dissipates any drama it had built by the eighth episode when for no apparent reason it spends an eternity discussing Russian and German history while taking the reporter on a mostly irrelevant journey through Germany and also trying to deepen emotions by making one conversation at a hospital last almost an hour. Strangely enough this can be good or bad for Inventing Anna. This makes breathing space around Delvey such that viewers can tolerate her for longer periods of time, yet it also becomes longwinded as a result.
To be honest, a film documenting all this by someone like Alex Gibney or Errol Morris would have been way superior and shorter than ten hours of the unbearable Delvey; nonetheless, such an alternative would have denied the world one of the most unusual, maddening and courageous yet insufferable acts in recent times. Shonda Rhimes is good with generic television, but Anna Delvey might just test her abilities to create a show even entertaining enough for some.
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