Netflix Secures a Defamation Suit From a Con Artist’s Ex-Bestie for ‘Inventing Anna’

What did the Ultimate Glam-Scam artist say?

You know me, said the ultimate glam-scam artist from Inventing Anna. Everyone knows who I am. And if everyone knows Anna Delvey/name, Sorokin’s then everyone also knows Rachel Williams’ name, much to the chagrin of the real-life Williams, who on Monday sued Netflix for defamation due to her portrayal. Williams, a former photo editor for Vanity Fair, methodically chronicled how much of her savings—$62,000—were lost in Sorokin’s web of falsehoods in a 2018 essay about their friendship-gone-wrong. (Her piece was published a month before the New York magazine article that served as the original inspiration for Inventing Anna.) Williams said in her most recent lawsuit, which was brought in federal court in Delaware and was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, that Netflix deliberately distorted her persona.

This case will demonstrate

This case will demonstrate that Netflix purposefully chose to represent Williams in the Series as being greedy, snobby, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative, and opportunistic for dramatic purposes, the suit claims. (The real) Anna Sorokin stated the following in a statement to The Daily Beast on Monday: Truth hurts. Williams claims that her on-screen counterpart, played by Scandal alum Katie Lowes, is a freeloading, backstabbing witch who turns on Sorokin (Julia Garner) when the con artist exhibits indications of being in serious financial trouble during a trip to Morocco. Williams claimed in her lawsuit that she’d actually ended the relationship when she got back to New York and realized Sorokin was a liar and a con artist.

According to Williams Lawsuit

According to Williams’ lawsuit, creating Anna was the direct cause of a deluge of online abuse, bad in-person contacts, and derogatory characterizations in podcasts. Following the success of the show, Williams received thousands of abusive notes, some of which referred to her as “Karen,” a gold-digging leech, a crybaby, and a GREEDY CLOWN. Williams cited a March interview with show creator Shonda Rhimes, who isn’t named as a defendant in the lawsuit, as proof of the company’s alleged intentions to defame her. In what Williams dubbed an admission, Rhimes stated, We wanted to know what we were making up; we didn’t want to be making stuff up just for the purpose of it.

Lakshmi Durga