According to a recent lawsuit, Rachel DeLoache Williams claims that scenes from the Netflix smash show Inventing Anna inaccurately represented her as “a greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative, and opportunistic person.”
A writer and photographer who was defrauded by the false heiress Anna Delvey is suing Netflix over how she was portrayed in a successful series based on the con artist’s narrative.
Rachel DeLoache Williams is an ex-friend of Delvey, whose real identity is Anna Sorokin, and who was convicted of impersonating a wealthy heiress to defraud banks, hotels, and New York socialites.
The story was presented in the Inventing Anna series, which launched on Netflix in February 2022 and starred Julia Garner as Delvey and Katie Lowes as Williams.
Williams is suing Netflix for false light breach of privacy and defamation for the way she was portrayed in the show, with her attorney claiming that the portrayal caused “devastating injury.”
“Greedy, condescending, and dishonest”
Williams, who gave her side of the tale in her 2019 book My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress, claims that moments in Inventing Anna inaccurately portrayed her as “greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative, and opportunistic”
Her complaint further states that she did not “sponge off” Sorokin, who was convicted in 2019, by “accepting presents of expensive clothes, jewelry, and accessories” or “enabling her to pay for all of their drinks, dinners, manicures, and saunas.”
She also claims that moments in the series in which Lowes’ character abandons Anna during a trip to Morocco while she was “alone and in difficulty” were not based in reality.
Williams, a former picture editor for Vanity Fair, also denied “lying to friends by concealing that she helped the police arrest” as depicted in the show.
The lawsuit states, “In actuality, she never did or said those things.” Thus, this case is firmly based on patently false claims of fact and the attribution of comments she never said.
Netflix’s Anna was a massive success. Williams stated in her lawsuit that the show’s popularity led to her receiving “thousands of similar hateful messages” online.
Netflix is “running a con artist’s PR”
In an essay written around the time of the show’s premiere, Williams stated: “Netflix is not only releasing fictional stories. It amounts to administering the public relations for a scam artist and putting money in her pocket.”
Williams’ attorney, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, told E! News, “We had to file suit because Netflix exploited Rachel’s genuine name and biographical information to portray her as a bad person, which she is not.”
He added: “Netflix might have prevented irreparable harm to her reputation if it had used a fictional name and different data. Why did they not do this for her when they did it for so many other characters?”
Mr. Rufus-Isaacs speculated that this was because “she chose to play for the other team, i.e. HBO.”
According to Williams’ website, HBO and Lena Dunham optioned her book My Friend Anna, but the option has expired and the movie is no longer in progress.
The action demands a jury trial, unspecified damages, and an injunction to remove from Inventing Anna the allegedly defamatory content regarding Williams.
