Inventing Anna: The Real Life Journalist Who Inspired Vivian Kent

Anyone who loves a good true story about a glamorous con woman is in for a good few weeks. The Dropout, following the case of Elizabeth Holmes and the fall of her company Theranos, stars Amanda Seyfried and lands on Hulu in early March. But in the meantime, Inventing Anna has arrived on Netflix to keep you going.

This is the story of Anna Delvy, or Anna Sorokin, played by Julie Garner, a woman who posed as a wealthy heiress and fooled high class New York society, including rinsing a number of people for considerable amounts of money. The show is framed via the journalist who is building a story about Delvy’s case after she’s due to stand trial. This character is named Vivian Kent, played by Anna Chlumsky. At the start of each episode, Inventing Anna proudly states that the story is completely true except for all the parts that are totally made up. It’s a dramatization (a highly entertaining one at that) and not a documentary. But there are definitely elements inspired by true events.

Vivian Kent is a fictionalized character but the journalist she is inspired by did indeed write an article for New York Magazine  about Delvey – the show is based on this article (in the show it’s called “Manhattan Magazine”). The name of the journalist is Jessica Pressler.

Though the show is about Delvy, Pressler herself is interesting. Alluded to in the show is a previous professional scandal that had set back her career and lost her a prestigious job offer at Bloomberg. This happened to Pressler. In 2014 she ran a story in New York Magazine about a New York highschool student named Mohammed Islam who claimed to have made $72 million trading stocks.