🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Rachel DeLoache Willams has become one of the most vocal critics of Inventing Anna – and her criticisms continued in a recent edition of British daytime talk show Lorraine.
Williams, who was left over $60,000 out of pocket following a trip to Morocco with Anna Delvey (aka Anna Sorokin), criticized the show before it came out for allowing Sorokin to profit from her crimes. And now it has come out, she has slammed the show for, in her words, being "completely detached from the majority of truth."
In the interview, she also pointed out the discrepancy between how her selling her story and Sorokin selling her life rights to Netflix were perceived.
What Rachel Williams Said About Inventing Anna
Asked how it felt having the world watch this version of the interview, Williams told interviewer Christine Lampard: "It's very surreal, because it's a version of the story that's completely detached from the majority of truth.
"I think this story on Netflix is trying to walk a very thin rope between fact and fiction. And it's cherry-picked names from reality and pieces of reality, but it's rearranged them. And I think that's very dangerous because we as humans, like, we create belief based on our connection to stories."
She went on to compare the story to the kind of false narratives used by con artists like Sorokin herself to make people believe her.
She said: "Con artists, they're good storytellers. This is another beautiful, intricately woven story that is delivering something that is detached from the essence of the people and events that whose story it's depicting."
Though Williams released two articles in the lead up to the series coming out (one for Time, one for Air Mail), this is one of the first interviews the writer has given since the release of the show on February 11.
With regards to Williams' accusation that Inventing Anna "cherry-picked names," the Netflix show does change some characters for dramatic purposes.
Vivian Kent (played by Anna Chlumsky), for example, is based on a reporter called Jessica Pressler, who is different in a number of ways from the TV version – for one, she didn't give birth as soon as she had written her story about Sorokin.
Anna's boyfriend Chase (Saamer Usmani), meanwhile, is a fictional character, extrapolated from one line in Pressler's article about a boyfriend of Anna's – and no, his awful-sounding crowd-funded dreams app is not real either.
In the interview, Williams brought up a scene from the show in which the character based on her is humiliated on the witness stand for profiting from her story. In Williams' view, it is unfair that she was criticized for this, while Netflix has received less scrutiny for paying Sorokin over $300,000 for her story.
Speaking of the real life moment when this happened in court, she said: "During my testimony, I was accused of using my testimony as content for entertainment because I had a book deal. And I was made to disclose the amount that I could possibly earn from from that. But at the same time, I was aware that Anna's lawyer and Anna herself were working with Netflix, and there were Netflix writers in the courtroom."
The Lorraine interview ended with Lampard mentioning that Netflix hadn't replied to a request for comment. Newsweek has sent its own request for comment to Netflix about Williams' claims, and will update this article if there is a response.
Inventing Anna is streaming now on Netflix.
