Netflix dropped all nine episodes of Inventing Anna on February 11, 2022, and the timing told you what the platform thought it had. Shonda Rhimes, the creator behind Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton, was back with her first series for the streamer under her overall deal. The subject was Anna Sorokin, the Russian-born woman who spent years telling New York’s wealthy that she was Anna Delvey, a German heiress with a fortune waiting overseas. Julia Garner took the title role. The result is a show that never decides whether it is a caper, a cautionary tale, or a defense of the woman at its center.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Anna Delvey and the German Heiress Story
The premise is simple enough on paper. Sorokin, under the name Anna Delvey, worked her way into New York’s high society by convincing people she was a German socialite and heir to a massive fortune. She schemed and scammed them out of millions. That is the spine of Inventing Anna, and it is a good one. A stranger walks into a city that measures people by their money and their connections, and she beats the city at its own game for a while.
Rhimes built the show around that premise, and Netflix gave her nine episodes to fill. That is the first problem. Nine hours is a long time to spend with a con, and Inventing Anna spends much of it circling.
Vivian Kent Chases the Story
The show does not tell the story straight from Sorokin’s side. It filters it through Vivian Kent, a journalist played by Anna Chlumsky, who is chasing the article that will explain Delvey to the world. That framing is the show’s best idea and its most frustrating one. Kent is pregnant, harried, and fighting her editors. Her scenes have a pulse. They also keep interrupting the more interesting story, which is the con itself.
The cast around her is strong. Arian Moayed plays Todd Spodek, the lawyer who takes Delvey on. Katie Lowes is Rachel Deloache Williams, the friend who ends up on the hook for a bill. Alexis Floyd plays Neffatari “Neff” Davis. Anna Deavere Smith is Maud Lewis. Laverne Cox appears as Kacy Duke. Jeff Perry, Terry Kinney, Anders Holm, and Lea Gerstenkorn round out the ensemble.
What Julia Garner Does With Anna
Garner is the reason to watch. She plays Delvey with a flat, unreadable accent and a stare that never quite lands on the person she is talking to. It is a performance built on withholding. You never get the sense that Delvey believes her own story, and you never get the sense that she doesn’t. That ambiguity is the most interesting thing in the show.
The show around her does not trust it. Inventing Anna keeps reaching for explanation. It wants you to understand why the marks fell for it, why the journalist chased it, why the city let it happen. Some of those answers land. Most of them arrive in dialogue that tells you what the scene already showed.
The Tone Problem
Here is the comparison that matters, and it is the one the show keeps inviting:
| Element | What Inventing Anna does | What the story needs |
|---|---|---|
| Anna Delvey | Garner plays her as blank and unknowable | A point of view on whether she is a con artist or a founder |
| Vivian Kent | Journalist framing device with a pregnancy subplot | A tighter chase, less personal business |
| The marks | Shown as rich and careless | Shown as people who made a choice |
| The con | Replayed across nine episodes | Fewer hours, harder turns |
The show’s tone swings between farce and seriousness without warning. One scene plays the scam for laughs. The next wants you to feel the cost. Neither register gets enough room to work, and the result is a show that feels longer than it is.
Where the Nine Episodes Land
The release schedule was simple. Netflix put the whole thing out at once.
| Episode | Release date | Network |
|---|---|---|
| 1 through 9 | February 11, 2022 | Netflix |
That all-at-once drop suits a show like this. There is no week to argue about a cliffhanger, no slow build. You either take the whole nine hours or you take none of them. Inventing Anna is built for the binge, and the binge exposes it. Watched in one run, the repetition is obvious. Watched weekly, the thinness of each hour would have been just as obvious.
The show is produced by Shondaland, and it is inspired by Sorokin’s story and by Jessica Pressler’s New York article “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People.” That article is the better version of this material. It is shorter, it is sharper, and it does not need to explain its subject to you.
The Verdict on Inventing Anna
Inventing Anna has one great performance and one good idea, and it stretches both across nine episodes that cannot support them. Garner is worth the watch. The show around her is not. It is a crime drama that keeps apologizing for being one, and it never earns the ambiguity it stumbles into.
The published critical score is 5.7 out of 10, and that is about right. Critics praised the performances, particularly Garner’s, and criticized the inconsistent tone. That split is the whole story. The cast is doing work the scripts do not deserve. If you want the Delvey story, read Pressler’s article first. If you want Garner, watch the first three episodes and stop.
Score: 5.7 of 10.
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