TL;DR: Reflections from "Inventing Anna"
An Elder Millenial, Immigrant, WOC Dissection Of The Series
I see what you did there, Shonda Rhimes.
While throughout watching the series, my fingers dug deep into my palms from frustration - “Why didn’t y’all see the signs? It was all over!” - to anger - “See! See what rich people can get away with! And even this fake rich person too!” I wished I could even slap all Anna Delvey, or Anna Sorokin’s, (Or who is she even really?) “friends” silly until woke up from this charade. I wanted to stop watching because it was driving my anxiety up the walls. But I binged this hard, even watched it again when I forced my husband to watch it.
Everyone has to see this, because this is not JUST your scammer jammer genre series. There’s so much more. It is about how the world works, money, power, ambition, being young, being an immigrant and the American dream, being a woman. Just as Shonda, lawyer Todd Spodek, journalist Vivian Kent (Jessica Pressler IRL) dove deep and weaved a story into Anna Delvey’s web of deceit, so must we.
So I did. I sat down and jotted down all the lessons I’ve learned, the questions I have from this Shonda Rhimes masterpiece as an elder millenial immigrant woman of color.
ON THE GOOD LIFE: We ALL want to experience the lux life. Who doesn’t? Because why not escape from the hum drum, regular joe, no designer digs, not visually arresting, un-instagrammable life? Why not get thousands of likes, shares and have the life everyone else aspires to have? Why not enjoy the absolute best that life has to offer? Maybe we all just want a BETTER life - to be paid enough to pay the bills and then extra to enjoy a “life for living” (Hello, to the bubbling labor revolution), instead of the endless grind to our bodies, minds and spirit to a pulp. Don’t we all deserve that decency to do so?
ON PIGGY BACKING AND FRIENDSHIP: Rachel, Neff, the trainer piggy backed on this outrageous socialite life that was beyond their wildest imaginations and dreams. Or, like I’ve said, it’s always a dream to live such life. Who wouldn’t want a free taste of it? They were told that they’d be taken cared of. Money was of no object. It was not theirs to spend. Or was it?
I’d like to believe that there are always strings attached. Even in friendship, there is an exchange whether be it of tangible things like money or energy in kind with oft unspoken, paperless trail of expectations. It is a transaction. In exchange for one’s friendship, experiences could be a form of payment.
Did Rachel chew on more than she could’ve afforded? In monetary absolute terms, yes. She could’ve declined, refused despite the itchy FOMO.
But how about this supposedly priceless thing called friendship? “I thought you were my friend. But this is how you treat me? After everything I’ve done for you?” Anna screamed over rosé at that intervention. Rachel gave trust and good faith in Anna’s friendship, pulling her out from a bind by handing over her credit card even with much trepidation, so could you call it a square deal? How much are we supposed to owe our friends? Are we really supposed to repay it? In what way?
It’s fucking complicated.
ON FAKING IT: Fake it until you make it, we’re often told on how to pull through challenges that we seem are too big for our shoes or our shrunken, insecure egos. How much faking do we have to do to make it, to get our goals, to make those dreams come true?
But do you have to railroad over, drag people other people through shit with you to get at it? How does one even get to sleep at night, knowing this? With all the people who’ve made thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions or billions screwing over ordinary people (Case in point, the 2008 financial crisis), I suppose they just sleep. That’s capitalism for you, capitalizing on others entrapped in desperate circumstances. “All the money in the world can’t buy you peace.” Amen, Kacy the trainer, Amen.
But can’t we have both some money and peace? I’d like an order of that to-go, please.
ON DEBT AND FRIENDSHIP: For someone who’s been haunted by debt that is not her own, but hunted down like an animal by banks, for someone who’s been on the other side, turned to by friends for money to borrow and, in turn, hunted them down for debt repayment - I see you, Rachel.
What does being a ride-or-die friend even mean when it comes to money? Do you stay friends with people who would do everything to reach their own dreams, but do not care for your financial well-being? How much support do you give your friends? Are you less of a friend if you choose not to give your a hand to someone who will chew off your leg? Was it too much that Rachel turned in her “friend” Anna to the authorities? Or were they never truly friends in the first place?
Maybe the police officer was right, choose better friends, Rachel. While hard to find, there are better ones out there.
ON LENDING MONEY: Speaking of lending money, I’ve learned from another friend that you give what you can that makes you sleep at night. This amount is comfortable enough for you to lose with the assumption that your friend or relative would not pay you back, a number that would not amount to losing a relationship down the line.
ON LOVE AND KINDNESS: What is love? What is kindness? What do they even mean? Does the idea of unconditional love even exist or is it bound to have limits? What about “tough love”? Tables turned with Kacy as Rachel coached her on the phone as they waited out for Anna to leave her apartment lobby. Rachel pushed,“Then you wait her out. You cannot let her win…Because you are a bad bitch.”
Was it “bad” to leave out that friend in need? Or was it really an absolute need? Can love and kindness also mean being like a mama bird shoving their chick over the nest for them to flail and force themselves to fly or is it only when you throw out the life buoy each and every time? It was love and kindness to themselves. Nothing wrong with that as Whitney Houston sang “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”
Leave a little, love a lot of yourself too.
ON ACCOUNTABILITY: Is there always a reason why we act the way we do? Vivian Kent was hell bent on proving that Anna’s relationship with her father made her who she was. While parents can do so much, we are influenced by other forces - people around us, the things that we see, especially on social media where we spend so much of our days on.
But, in the end, we will all grow up, turn into fully formed adults with free will, the ability to make choices from our own heads and hearts. Those choices, good or bad, do have consequences. With every right, there is a responsibility. Karma’s a bitch and, like social media, it’s now digital, baby.
ON BEING SPECIAL: “We are not special.” Vivian emphasizes to her husband after being mocked by Anna that pregnant women squat in fields to give birth. We are not royalty. We do not have trust funds to our names. We we wish there was some Yamashita’s treasure hiding around somewhere for us to find and spend. We wished have a cushy windfall from our families, when shit hits the fan, whether we dug our own grave or be victims of unfortunate circumstances.
But we don’t.
It IS harder for the rest of us. Fact. No going around this one even if whine about it. Just suck it up and do the best you can. And fight the power when you still can.
ON SUICIDE: What an awkward situation Anna put people in when she dropped hints that she wanted to hurt herself. But in these kinds of situations, one never knows.
Is it possible for her friends to have called on the National Suicide Prevention hotline for her? Should you have ANY thoughts of ending your life, call the National Suicide Prevention hotline 800-273-8255.
And, again, be kind. You never know if someone is going through something.
ON ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITY: Would people here have given me the light of day, the same access if I claimed I was trust fund baby, daughter of a Philippine business magnate?
How much opportunity is opened to people who know are within the periphery of the right people in the right places? Money is access. Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if more opportunities were opened up to other people who are not within those circles?
ON BEAUTY: Anna wasn’t pretty nor hot in the conventional way, but she dressed the part. It was about who she wore and how she wore it. At the end of the day, we are visual creatures.
ON BEING A WOMAN: Is Anna being punished because she is a woman? Are men who do operate with the same modus also punished? Or are they treated differently?
ON AMERICAN STEREOTYPES: Vivian was imagining Anna’s father to be that up-to-no-good, mobster Russian that’s oft played out on American media. Vivian, is your imagination limited to those that you can’t possibly imagine immigrants being someone else?
I get the “Oh, you must be a nurse.” Comment a lot. While kudos to our Filipino nurses, it doesn’t mean that being Filipino automatically makes me a nurse.
ON PASSPORTS: As an immigrant, I saw how easy it was for Anna and her German passport. The color of your passport is also a passport to privileges that determines how challenging and determining your “right” to be here. Dig through your personal history to determine your status - whether you’re worth of contributing to American society. Her pending deportation case with ICE begs the question: Who deserves to be in America? What makes her deserve to stay? Is she any better from other immigrants seeking better economic opportunities, escaping circumstances of war and abject poverty and hunger? Or despite her mistakes, is her being born in the “right” country with the “right” passport make her deserve to stay?
I watched Anna’s post jail time interview on 60 Minutes Australia. Apparently, she is now in ICE custody, while she awaits the verdict of her deportation case.
ON MAKING MISTAKES IN OUR TWENTIES: While, I did not end up in prison, became an infamous darling of the press and had an entire series made about my life, I did stupid things in my twenties. We ALL did. I laugh about it, but also, am still haunted by snippets of the many doh! moments, wishing I could delete them from my memory’s harddrive forever. But they’re there as reminders, guardrails that have served me in the next decades of my life. I still make some mistakes, but I’d like to think I am a better person because of them.
At least, I try my best to be.
I felt for her as Anna repeatedly bawled with specific intention to gain sympathy and, yes, cash or credit card details or a bed to sleep on too. “You have no clue what it’s like for me.” But I really, really do. Lord knows nobody still doesn’t fully understand what it’s like for me and I am forty years old.
But, honey, the world is unfair, we don’t always get what we want, more so need, so we struggle. Life isn’t a bed of roses all the freakin’ time.
ON GETTING AWAY WITH IT: While yes, Anna was clever in one-upping those at the seats of money and power. Brilliant even. Ruthless. She has no remorse, as she stated in her 60 Minutes interview, no guilt for what she did to her victims.
And THAT scares me. This is even just her first crack at it as far as we know. Like with all big things, those start with a small step, then another and another. Does this “smaller” con without remorse mean that there would also be absolutely no guilt for a bigger con?
She is a baby Marcos, the Philippine dictator, whose family stole billions of dollars of tax money from the people. He was brilliant, but does that override the fact that he was a thief without remorse. His family also doesn’t acknowledge this fact. In fact, Marcos Jr, is now gunning for the presidency, the attempt for the next generation con.
So Lord help us all.
Could education, guidance from family and friends or mentorship be enough to thwart people from these kinds mistakes? Or are we really meant to go through them to actually learn?
From one bullheaded girl to another, no.
Now, this is clearly not the end for Anna Sorokin. This is only the beginning. Released from prison in February 2021, all eyes will be on her to prove if she actually learned something. So for now, let her bid her time in the outside world, face more responsibilities from her past actions and have access to money again. While this will most likely be limited, the girl’s got to eat and pay the bills like the rest of us. She did get paid $320,000 to get her story onto the black mirrors in our devices, but she used it to pay back whom she owed. And now she has her email up on her still running Instagram account should anyone be interested to do business with her.
Will this be her redemption arc? We can only cross her fingers and hope she learned, use her brilliance (You must admit she was), work towards her dreams. She’s still young. She has gumption. I hope against hope, filled with the same grandeur of dreaming, bordering on delusion that she does right for herself. Whatever that means. So for now, Shonda Rhimes, whatever happens to her, I will be ready for a possible season 2.
If you made it this far, brava. Thank you for reading! I will save for what more stuff I’ve been reading and watching for next time.
God knows, I still have too many thoughts about this story.