Inventing Anna - Netflix

[HeyItsPickleRick]

I've been obsessed with this case since listening to The Fake Heiress on BBC sounds. Is anyone else watching?! I love the casting of Anna.

That photo of Anna in the souk reminds me of Eddie in the Absolutely Fabulous episode set in Morocco. Jennifer Saunders knew the world she was writing about!

If you can’t face the VF article, here is how Rachel became friends with Anna (paraphrased from Rachel’s own account):

Rachel and some work acquaintances went to a cool bar/club where you had to get past the doorman. That was why she went with the work acquaintances. No point hanging out with real friends if they can’t get you into the cool places, eh? Better to be a hanger on with your Vanity Fair colleagues.

She’d seen Anna previously ‘on the scene’ but they hadn’t spoken. Rachel had clearly taken note of the trappings of wealth though. Anna and her group sit at a nearby table and Anna has bottle service. Ker-ching! A potential rich friend to lig off! Rachel starts chatting to her.

A couple of weeks later, Rachel says, she’s invited to dinner with Anna and a mutual friend. Happy coincidence! She and Anna see each other every couple of weeks, with Anna paying for drinks and dinner, naturally until Anna gets back from Europe and moves into the 11 Howard hotel. At this point they become ‘fast friends’.

I am put in mind of Elizabeth Bennet saying (jokingly) that she fell in love with Mr Darcy as soon as she saw Pemberley. I wonder whether Rachel’s decision to become Anna’s best mate was anything to do with Anna having the funds to live in a cool and prestigious hotel for months on end, and eat in its well-regarded and expensive restaurant with hip and rich people? And Anna’s expensive personal training sessions, which Rachel attended for free?

(All of this is from the article, BTW, not the Netflix adaptation)

You have to wonder how much of her own ligging Rachel chose not to tell us about, of course. Seeing as she wrote the article.

I’m listening to the podcast now

@Fritilleries

I'm on episode 8. The journalist is in Germany and I'm now confused. I am not enjoying how obtuse it is, as in what is factually real and "made up". It's making an actual star of a criminal who lied and conned. It really doesn't reflect well on Netflix. Yet I am watching it.... the hypocrisy.

This is the issue I have with it too. It's hard to judge Anna as a person when I'm not sure what is fact and what is fantasy. To me she's a delusional con artist but the show is portraying her as a victim of the patriarchy, who's only crime was to be poor and have grand ambitions.

I started watching this hoping to find out how Anna managed to con her way into high society, but the story has taken different turn and it's become Anna Vs Rachel: who's worse? I haven't seen anything that really mitigates Anna's behaviour. I don't think you can really compare Anna to Frank Sinatra, he might have paid women to faint, but at least he paid them. Anna such an awful person. I don't understand why everyone is Pandering to her every whim. She literally has nothing to offer any one and I'm not just talking to money.

I really enjoyed it. Thanks to who mentioned Anna was Ruth in Ozark. Knew she was familiar but couldn’t place her. Thought she did a great job. Made an unlikeable character human.
Thought there was parallel in many of the main character stories. They all lied to an extent to get what they wanted.
Remember reading about the story a while ago. One of the points they made was the tips she gave out were so outrageous that people did believe she had money because otherwise she wouldn’t have been so generous when there was no real need to be.

@Iamthewombat

You have to wonder how much of her own ligging Rachel chose not to tell us about, of course. Seeing as she wrote the article.

Yes. I imagine Anna wasn't her only mark. And she probably used her VF position to get in to events.

But Rachel actually worked at Vanity Fair though, she wasn't lying about that. Anna, however, was lying about being a German heiress

Anna is I agree a delusional con woman.

I think the journalist did get too close to the story and Anna played her. Although her article was a million times better than Rachel's, it was still muddled over details and confused in its aim. I wondered why when I read it. The series explained it to me - she was too close and she never did get a grip on who Anna was.

But she was right that it's a critique of the financial system and the patriarchy. Perhaps it needed a focus on a male start-up that did 'succeed' because their path would have been very similar to Anna's - hustling and hustling until it works. 'Chase' was supposed to be the Anna equivalent but he got away with his millions and moved into a lucrative position overseas. A better comparison would have been one of the start-ups that made it.

Anna was 'dangerously close' and if she'd pulled it off then no-one would have cared that she didn't have the inheritance behind her. A lot of new businesses and especially in the US and in start-up culture are about faking it till you make it; it is about persuading investors to give you money for an 'idea' and then using that money to leverage more money from someone else.

The entire system is built on sand.

And accepting free meals etc of someone you think is rich, is not the same as conning free hotels, meals and holidays out of various people.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by the awful Toby Young who spent 5 years at US Vanity Fair. It's 20 years old now but useful if you want a glimpse of their magazine culture. All liggers welcome as long as they can dress and maybe have access to a supply of Class As. It's not Intellect Central.

This is an interview with the Real Anna.

@LorelaiDeservedBetter

I think the journalist did get too close to the story and Anna played her. Although her article was a million times better than Rachel's, it was still muddled over details and confused in its aim. I wondered why when I read it. The series explained it to me - she was too close and she never did get a grip on who Anna was.

But she was right that it's a critique of the financial system and the patriarchy. Perhaps it needed a focus on a male start-up that did 'succeed' because their path would have been very similar to Anna's - hustling and hustling until it works. 'Chase' was supposed to be the Anna equivalent but he got away with his millions and moved into a lucrative position overseas. A better comparison would have been one of the start-ups that made it.

Anna was 'dangerously close' and if she'd pulled it off then no-one would have cared that she didn't have the inheritance behind her. A lot of new businesses and especially in the US and in start-up culture are about faking it till you make it; it is about persuading investors to give you money for an 'idea' and then using that money to leverage more money from someone else.

The entire system is built on sand.

I get the hustling culture but that doesn’t explain the theft from Nora or the need to rip off the hotels or even her relationships with her 3 friends. These 3 were of little use to her on her way up - she didn’t seem to get any acceptance or an “in” with any of Nora’s girl friends - managed to bamboozle the male investors? Maybe they just saw it as transactional and she was a client?

@Monopolyiscrap

And accepting free meals etc of someone you think is rich, is not the same as conning free hotels, meals and holidays out of various people.

I can't tell which of them you're referring to - Anna accepting meals from Nora, the other start-up people, investors or Rachel accepting meals from Anna and her 'friends'.

Rachel conning free hotels, personal trainer, meals, holidays and clothes out of Anna by pretending to be her 'friend'. Or Anna 'conning' hotels, meals, holidays from Nora, the influencer and the investors.

On the holidays, clothes, extravagant purchases front - they were working a similar grift. Just at a different level.

The credit card and wire fraud were the main difference between Anna and Rachel. But that's the difference that means one of them is in jail and the other has earned over $335,000 out of all this plus the article and interview fees and the holiday to Morocco.

It's where it all falls down as a morality tale. There's precious lack of morality in sight.

Seems they were all parasites in some sort of parasitical hierarchy….

Not finished the series yet, but is Laverne Cox not playing a trans woman ?

No I think Rachel was using Anna for a nice free social life. And Anna was effectively buying friends/companions. It was a transactional relationship.
Anna conned money out of Nora by signing for purchases that were not for Nora.

@longwayoff

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by the awful Toby Young who spent 5 years at US Vanity Fair. It's 20 years old now but useful if you want a glimpse of their magazine culture. All liggers welcome as long as they can dress and maybe have access to a supply of Class As. It's not Intellect Central.

Yes, it is an excellent insight into the New York social stratum that Anna, Rachel and Neff wanted to elbow their way into, by different methods of course.

The Fyre festival documentary is another one. The Netflix adaptation cheekily suggests that Anna was a lodger of Billy McFarland (the chancer who set up the Fyre festival and is now in prison for fraud). Or the Netflix doc about We Work. Or even the old Sex and the City episodes.

What all of those books and films have in common (and Toby Young’s book is MILES better than the film adaptation, whatever you think of him) is the depiction of people desperate to mix with the rich successful members of New York society, and ready to do anything to join them.

In the Fyre festival doc, which I recommend, you see McFarland, who is a bit of a pudding frankly, setting up a credit card business that came with access to what people saw as exclusive social events. It was a success with a certain type of young-ish aspirational New York resident. He then conceives the idea for the Fyre festival and pays supermodels to post about it on Instagram. He makes a promo video of him and his associates frolicking in the surf with beautiful girls they wouldn’t have a chance with in real life, or riding on jet skis. His festival sold out in a few days, at $2,500 minimum per ticket plus extras, because the people he was marketing it at were daft enough to think, “yes, that’s what the cool successful people are doing so I’d better do it too”. Some of the male attendees are interviewed in the doc: they genuinely thought that they were going for a luxurious stay with the coolest, richest people in the world and would be jumping off private yachts with Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. So credulous.

It’s not that different to what Anna did. Of course she is a chancer and a terrible person but she’s pursuing the same ‘fake it til you make it’ strategy. It succeeds because a certain type of person (Rachel, the Fyre festival marks, the women conned by the Tinder Swindler) is so desperate to be part of something cool, or to join a particular social group, or to be close to money in case some of it comes their way in the form of a job or a rich spouse, that they will pretty much believe anything.

It's interesting that Nora and Rachel got their debts waved by AmEx but the victims of the Tindler Swindler got stuck with theirs. I guess it really does help to be rich and well connected.

What Anna did was really fucked up but I guess people don't sympathize with her victims as much because they were mostly financial corporations or rich people.

Actually having said that people didn't seem to have a lot of sympathy for the victims of the Tindler Swindler either.

Apparently Anna really did stay with the Fyre Festival guy.

I loved that doc. It was crazy! The one thing that really stuck with me was that he didn't fool stupid people. They were intelligent, experienced, well-educated and they totally fell for his con.

@AnyFucker

Not finished the series yet, but is Laverne Cox not playing a trans woman ?

Was she the judge in e.1?

Watched it all despite her horrendous voice.

I have read successful con people saying that the secret is that you have to be promising them something they really really want. If they want it enough, they often ignore the signs that you can not deliver.