《创造安娜》围绕一位调查安娜·德尔维一案、迫切想证明自己的记者展开。安娜·德尔维是 Instagram 上传奇的德国女继承人,她赢得了纽约社交圈的欢心,还偷走了他们的金钱。安娜是纽约最大的女骗子,亦或仅仅是美国梦的新写照?在等待自己审讯的同时,安娜和这位记者结成了一种黑暗又有趣、爱恨交织的关系,而后者也在争分夺秒地为纽约市的一个最大疑问寻找答案:谁是安娜·德尔维?该剧的灵感来自《纽约》杂志上杰西卡·普雷斯勒的一篇文章《How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People》。
昨天二刷了一遍《虚构安娜》,想通了很多第一次看时模模糊糊感觉到的东西。
很多人最初只期待看到一个类似《猫鼠游戏》似的底层人混成假名媛似的传奇故事,但是被剧里面大篇幅记者和律师的片段弄得一次又一次地失望和快进,甚至非常想不通为什么,这样一部剧,要画蛇添足用记者作为主线来串联,为什么要去描摹记者和律师跟安娜的互动。
除了这些人物都来自现实,这个剧这么设计是因为它有更大的野心。
因为剧作团队,在听了现实安娜的叙述之后,想通过这个故事来指出我们生活的世界有多悲哀、荒谬、令人愤怒又无能为力。
采访安娜的记者薇薇安,第一次理解安娜,是在采访和安娜有过交集的一个女富豪的故事。那个女富豪说,她第一次和安娜认识,是在一个艺术画展上。当时安娜一个人盯着一副抽象画欣赏,于是女富豪走了过去,因为那幅画正是女富豪准备拍下的。她问安娜有没有什么意见,对于这幅画。安娜耸耸肩。女富豪说:“oh,你就像其他人一样夸夸这幅画就好了,毕竟我马上就要买下它。”
安娜耸耸肩说:“如果我是你,我就根本不会买下它。它一文不值。或者说,整个这个展,所有都一文不值。除了那个。”
女富豪跟着安娜走到一副很小的黑白自拍像前面。那是艺术家Cindy Sherman的。女富豪不明白。她对安娜说,好吧,就算Cindy Sherman很有名,但这也只是她自己瞎玩乐自拍的作品,在她那么多的作品不值一提,为什么会值钱?
安娜说:“这是她随意玩乐的作品?这是她第一次走进自己摄像机的作品。在这幅作品之前,Cindy Sherman不过是一个普通的工作人员,她坐在摄像机后,听着其他那些男摄影师们的安排,设计布景。但是有一天,她突然有了想法。她走进了自己的摄影机。她不再是那个工作人员。她开始成为了Cindy Sherman。这就是这张照片的意义。这就是它为什么值钱。”
这段话给女富豪留下了很深的印象。在她眼里,安娜成了一个艺术品味很高,非常聪明,能力超绝的德国女富二代。即便之后安娜和男友滥用了她朋友的游艇,她也觉得是安娜为了迁就男友。这是女富豪对于安娜的虚构。但是对于女记者薇薇安来说,这个故事让她迈出了理解安娜的第一步:她在安娜身上看到了Cindy sherman的影子。安娜不想接受上天给她的安排,以一个普通人的身份,通过自己的奋斗,得到上层的认可。安娜要走到自己的摄影机前面。她要成为用想象力铺汇的自己。她要让世界接受它,而不是适应这个世界。
在女富豪之后,薇薇安又一步步找到了与安娜有过交集的所有人:高定服装设计师Val,女慈善家Nora,酒店前台Neff,高级私人教练Kacy,《名利场》编辑Rachel,前男友兼科技企业老板Chase,《名利场》的摄影师Noah,安娜的投资经理人……让薇薇安好奇的是,为什么这么多的上流人物,从来没有怀疑过安娜的身份。他们的回答都是,安娜看起来就是上流。她有最时尚的穿衣品味,她有超绝的艺术审美,她甚至会七门外语,里面包括了中国普通话。她有很强的投资计算能力。甚至,她可以过目不忘。
但是这给弹幕里面很多人留下了直到结束也没能解决的疑问,包括很多影评:安娜能力这么强,会这么多东西,为什么她不能好好找个工作。她这样的,随随便便也能混得很好啊。
但其实这正是这个剧探讨的东西。
在第一次开庭前,安娜的律师托德找到了负责起诉安娜的女检察官。他们曾经是同学。托德带着自己的小孩在公园散步,顺便堵住了检察官。女检察官说,她是不可能撤诉的,这个案子很重要,并且她认为意义重大。这个案子反映了当代社会问题。
什么社会问题呢?年轻人们贪慕虚荣,留恋享受,为此撒下弥天大谎,只为了花天酒地。这是女检察官认为安娜所反映的东西。
律师托德说:“是,这个案子反映了当代社会问题。因为安娜是当代罗宾汉。”
很多,很多人以为,律师托德这里把安娜比喻成绿林好汉罗宾汉,是因为安娜在欺骗富人。所以很多人驳斥说,安娜骗来的投资并没有劫富济贫,很多还自己花了。所以她根本就不是罗宾汉。
但不是的,律师托德的意思不是这个意思。
绿林好汉罗宾汉是什么故事? 诺丁汉郡长占了罗宾汉家里的土地,甚至还想强占罗宾汉的妻子玛丽安。所以罗宾汉舍去了理查王治下的公民身份,他走进了舍伍德森林,他成为了一个小偷,一个强盗。他不再接受他生来如此的身份。他选择成为了一个小偷向这个社会抗议。
这就是律师托德将安娜比喻成罗宾汉的原因。安娜拒绝接受社会给她安排的身份和命运。她选择创造一个新的命运。
这也是安娜的故事之所以很震撼的原因:因为过去的故事,统统都是在讲一个英雄,一个主人公,如何努力抗争自己原本的命运,经历重重磨难之后创造新生。但是安娜不,安娜开始质问:“凭什么?凭什么我生来就要有这样的命运?这样的命运是天定的,还是人定的?有谁和我商量过吗?我不接受它。所以更别提让我反抗它。”
这回答的是那个问题:为什么安娜能力这么强,她却不愿意好好工作?
因为好好工作,努力奋斗就是接受原本的命运,就是和原本的命运抗争。安娜选择无视她的命运。因为她不接受这就是她的命运。
律师托德和记者薇薇安在最后深深地理解安娜,关心安娜,就是因为他们深深感触了这一点。他们知道这个社会是不公平和不正义的。其中最大的不公平,就是社会要求一个人接受自己天生的命运,接受自己站到自己应该站到的位置上。这也是一个人最大的无能为力。
薇薇安第一次在监狱会见室里见到安娜,安娜认为薇薇安没有通过媒体专用通道,没有申请到单独访问室,代表了薇薇安带了先入为主的想象,并没有期待从安娜口中听到不一样的故事,所以安娜故意说,她准备考虑签认罪认罚书了,这样可以少判很多年。
薇薇安劝她不要。安娜说:“那你给我一个理由。”
薇薇安说:“如果你签下了这个认罪书,就代表你接受了社会讲述的关于你的故事,代表你认可了他们觉得你是一个女骗子,一个假名媛。但你自己不认为你是这样的人。你不要向社会的他们低头。”
安娜嘲讽地笑。但她最后接受了这个理由。
而在倒数第二次庭审中,被安娜借伟德体育最新网站卡刷了五万的《名利场》编辑瑞秋,坐在法庭证人席上,讲述自己和安娜的故事。讲述安娜如何欺骗了她,如何给她带来了巨大的创伤,原本积极上进的生活,如何经历了很长一段时间灰暗期,她又如何决定鼓起勇气站在这里,讲述自己经历,将勇气传递给每一个人。
陪审团的很多人都感动了。
安娜一回到候审室就崩溃了。她对律师托德歇斯底里说:“瑞秋那个婊子。陪审团都相信她的bull shit了。我们完了。她比我好看,她比我演得好。他们现在都相信她了。但我不是什么女骗子,假名媛。我不是骗子。我差一点点就拿到投资了。我差一点点就真的成功了。”
她说什么也不肯再继续出庭,然后和同样崩溃的律师吵了一架。最后两个人坐在地上,律师托德说服了安娜相信自己。因为他相信安娜。他相信安娜不是他们认为的“女骗子”。
安娜只提出了一个要求:“辩护的时候必须把我辩护成差一点点就成功的女企业家。哪怕我因此要做很多年牢。”
律师同意了。但他一开始准备的辩护策略就是,把安娜的行为辩护成,离犯罪还差得远呢。那些拙劣的伎俩根本就没骗到Fortress的投资经理人们,所以根本谈不上犯罪。
所以在最后辩护陈词的时候,律师做出了选择。他对陪审团的人说:“如果你们认为安娜的计划如此幼稚、拙劣,那么你们同样也必须得认为,安娜离犯罪还远着。同样,如果你们认为安娜犯罪了,那么也代表承认,安娜差一点就成功得到了那么多的投资。”
他说完这段话很忐忑。因为这不是安娜的意思。所以在审判结果公布之后,他和妻子走出大门,准备打车去机场开始去度假。他对妻子说,不好意思,他必须要回去看安娜。就算妻子威胁他要和他离婚,他也要回去看安娜。
很多人也不懂,为什么这个律师还放不下安娜。觉得这就是安娜所说的“利用他人的愧疚”,律师被安娜利用和控制了。
但其实不是的。律师回去,只是因为他觉得对不起自己的良心。他没有按照安娜的意思做,更没有按照他自己相信的信念去做。他为了让安娜少一些刑期,做了相反的事。
他不是在为安娜辩护。他是在为自己相信的信念,相信这个世界不应该是这样而辩护。
在筹划安娜辩护的整个期间,时间一拖再拖,最后律师的老婆在家里和他大吵一架。律师的老婆说她不理解,为什么律师对安娜这么上心。如果律师和安娜有一腿那还好了,她可以理解。但是律师和安娜之间什么都没有。为什么律师对安娜这么关心。
律师说:“因为当年我也是这样一个人来到纽约……”他说了一半就没说了,只留下痛苦,愤怒,却不知如何表达的表情。他说:“说了你也不会懂,你不会懂。你从来就不用经历过。”
当律师在审判结束后,抛下老婆来到候审室,看到安娜靠在墙上崩溃地大哭。他试着去安慰安娜,但是安娜最后崩溃大哭说:
“没关系了,没关系了。他们看见了。他们判我对诈骗峰堡的投资有罪,对瑞秋的伟德体育最新网站卡5万美元无罪。他们知道我不是一个花天酒地的女骗子。他们知道差一点就成功了。他们看见我了。判决传出去,整个世界也知道了。我不是一个女骗子。我差一点就成功了。”
这也是这个剧最终落脚的地方。刨除所有人对安娜的虚构,真实的安娜是什么?是一个来自于德国偏远穷苦小镇的普通人,她不接受自己既定的命运,更不屑于和这样的命运耗上十几年抗争。她直接向整个世界和社会宣战。她要得到她认为自己应得的命运。而她差一点点,差一点点就成功了。dangerously close。
这就是安娜。
“Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It”
Jessica Pressler
It started with money, as it so often does in New York. A crisp $100 bill slipped across the smooth surface of the mid-century-inspired concierge desk at 11 Howard, the sleek new boutique hotel in Soho. Looking up, Neffatari Davis, the 25-year-old concierge, who goes by “Neff,” was surprised to see the cash had come from a young woman who seemed to be around her age. She had a heart-shaped face and pouty lips surrounded by a wild tangle of red hair, her eyes framed by incongruously chunky black glasses that Neff, an aspiring cinematographer with an eye for detail, identified as Céline. She was looking, she said in an accent that sounded European, for “the best food in Soho.”
“What’s your name?” Neff asked, after the girl waved off her suggestions of Carbone and the Mercer Kitchen and settled on the Butcher’s Daughter.
“Anna Delvey,” said the young woman. She’d be staying at the hotel for a month, she went on, which Neff also found surprising: Usually it was only celebrities who came for such long stretches. But Neff checked the system, and there it was. Delvey was booked into a Howard Deluxe, one of the hotel’s midrange options, about $400 a night, with ceramic sculptures on the walls and oversize windows looking onto the bustling streets of Soho. It was February 18, 2017.
“Thanks,” said Delvey. “See you around.”
That turned out to be a promise. Over the next few weeks, Delvey stopped by often to ask Neff’s advice, slipping her $100 each time. Neff would wax on about how Mr. Purple was totally washed and Vandal was for hipsters, while Delvey’s eyes would flit around behind her glasses. Eventually, Neff realized: Delvey already knew all the cool places to go — not only that, she knew the names of the bartenders and waiters and owners. “This is not a guest that needs my help,” it dawned on her. “This is a guest that wants my time.”
This was not out of the ordinary. Since she’d started working there, Neff, a Washington, D.C., native with a wedge of natural hair, giant Margaret Keane eyes, and a gap-toothed smile, had found herself playing therapist to all manner of hotel guests: husbands cheating on their wives, wives getting away from their husbands. “You just sit there and listen, because that’s your concierge life,” she recalled recently, at a coffee shop near her apartment in Crown Heights.
Usually, these guests went back to their own lives, leaving Neff to hers. But February became March, and Delvey kept showing up. She’d bring food down, or a glass of extra-dry white wine, and settle near Neff’s desk to chat. Some of the other hotel employees found Anna deeply annoying. She could be oddly ill-mannered for a rich person: Please and thank you were not in her vocabulary, and she would sometimes say things that were “Not racist,” Neff said, “but classist.” (“What are you bitches, broke?” Anna asked her and another hotel employee.) But to Neff, it didn’t come across as mean-spirited. More like she was some kind of old-fashioned princess who’d been plucked from an ancient European castle and deposited in the modern world, although according to Anna she came from modern-day Germany and her father ran a business producing solar panels. And despite her unassuming figure — “a sort of Sound of Music Fräulein,” one acquaintance later put it — Anna quickly established herself as one of 11 Howard’s most generous guests. “People would fight to take her packages upstairs,” said Neff. “Fight, because you knew you were getting $100.” Over time, Delvey got more and more comfortable in the hotel, swanning around in sheer Alexander Wang leggings or, occasionally, a hotel robe. “She ran that place,” said Neff. “You know how Rihanna walks out with wineglasses? That was Anna. And they let her. Bye, Ms. Delvey …”
Anna was preparing to launch a business, a Soho House–ish type club, she told Neff, focused on art, with locations in L.A., London, Hong Kong, and Dubai, and Neff became her de facto secretary, organizing business lunches and dinners at restaurants like Seamore’s and the hotel’s own Le Coucou. (“That’s what they do in the rich culture, is meals,” said Neff.) On occasion, when Delvey showed up while the concierge desk was busy, she would stand at the counter, coolly counting out bills until she got Neff’s attention. “I’d be like, ‘Anna, there’s a line of eight people.’ But she’d keep putting money down.” And even though Neff had begun to think of Anna as not just a hotel guest but a friend, a real friend, she didn’t hesitate to take it. “A little selfish of me,” she admitted later. “But … yeah.”
Who can blame her? This was Manhattan in the 21st century, and money is more powerful than ever. Rare is the city dweller who, when presented with an opportunity for a sudden and unexpected influx of cash, doesn’t grasp for it. Of course, this money almost always comes with strings attached. Sometimes you can barely see them, like that vaudeville bit in which the pawn dives for a loose bill only to find it pulled just ahead. Still, everyone makes the reach. Because here, money is the one thing that no one can ever have enough of.
For a stretch of time in New York, no small amount of the cash in circulation was coming from Anna Delvey. “She gave to everyone,” said Neff. “Uber drivers, $100 cash. Meals — listen. You know how you reach for your credit card? She wouldn’t let me.”
The way Anna spent money, it was like she couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. Her room was overflowing with shopping bags from Acne and Supreme, and in between meetings, she’d invite Neff to foot massages, cryotherapy, manicures (Anna favored “a light Wes Anderson pink,” according to Neff). One day, she brought Neff to a session with a personal trainer–slash–life coach she’d found online, a svelte, ageless Oprah-esque figure who works with celebrities like Dakota Johnson.
“Stop sinking into your body,” the trainer commanded Anna. “Shoulders back, navel to spine. You are a bright woman; you want to be a businesswoman. You gotta be staying strong on your own power.”
Afterward, as Neff panted on the sidelines, Anna bought a package of sessions. “It was, I’m not lying, $4,500,” said Neff.
Anna paid cash.
Neff’s boyfriend didn’t understand why she was spending so much time with this weird girl from work. Anna didn’t understand why Neff had a boyfriend. But he was rich, Neff protested. He’d promised to finance her first movie. “Dump him,” Anna advised. “I have more money.” She would finance the movie.
Neff did dump the guy. Not because of what Anna had said, although she had no reason to doubt it. Her new friend, she discovered, belonged to a vast and glittering social circle. “Anna knew everyone,” said Neff. At night, she’d taken to hosting large dinners at Le Coucou, attended by CEOs, artists, athletes, even celebrities. One night, Neff found herself seated next to her childhood idol, Macaulay Culkin. “Which was awkward,” she said. “Because I had so many questions. And he was right there. But they were talking about, like, friend stuff. So I never got the chance to be like, ‘So, you the godfather to Michael Jackson’s kids?’”
Despite her seemingly nomadic living situation, Anna had long been a figure on the New York social scene. “She was at all the best parties,” said marketing director Tommy Saleh, who met her in 2013 at Le Baron in Paris during Fashion Week. Delvey had been an intern at European scenester magazine Purple and appeared to be tight with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Olivier Zahm, and its man-about-town, André Saraiva, an owner of Le Baron — two of “the 200 or so people you see everywhere,” as Saleh put it: Chilterns and Loulou’s in London; the Crow’s Nest in Montauk; Paul’s Baby Grand and the Bowery Hotel; Frieze, Coachella, Art Basel. “She introduced herself, and she was a sweet girl, very polite,” said Saleh. “Then we’re just hanging with my friends all of a sudden.”
Soon, Anna was everywhere too. “She managed to be in all the sort of right places,” recalled one acquaintance who met Anna in 2015 at a party thrown by a start-up mogul in Berlin. “She was wearing really fancy clothing” — Balenciaga, or maybe Alaïa — “and someone mentioned that she flew in on a private jet.” It was unclear where exactly Anna came from — she told people she was from Cologne, but her German wasn’t very good — or what the source of her wealth was. But that wasn’t unusual. “There are so many trust-fund kids running around,” said Saleh. “Everyone is your best friend, and you don’t know a thing about anyone.”
She was wearing really fancy clothing. Some one mentioned she flew in on a private jet.
After a gallerist at Pace introduced her to Michael Xufu Huang, the extremely young, extremely dapper collector and founder of Beijing’s M Woods museum, Anna proposed they go together to the Venice Biennale. Huang thought it was “a little weird” when Anna asked him to book the plane tickets and hotel on his credit card. “But I was like, Okay, whatever,” he said. It was also strange, he noticed during their time there, that Anna only ever paid with cash, and after they got back, she seemed to forget she’d said she’d pay him back. “It was not a lot of money,” he said. “Like two or three thousand dollars.” After a while, Huang kind of forgot about it too.
When you’re superrich, you can be forgetful in this way. Which is maybe why no one thought much of the instances in which Anna did things that seemed odd for a wealthy person: calling a friend to have her put a taxi from the airport on her credit card, or asking to sleep on someone’s couch, or moving into someone’s apartment with the tacit agreement to pay rent, and then … not doing it. Maybe she had so much money she just lost track of it.
The following January, Anna hired a PR firm to put together a birthday party at one of her favorite restaurants, Sadelle’s in Soho. “It was a lot of very cool, very successful people,” said Huang, who, while aware Anna owed him money for their Venice trip, remained mostly unconcerned about it, at least until the restaurant, having seen Polaroids of Huang and Anna at the party on Instagram, messaged him a few days later. “They were like, ‘Do you have her contact info?’” he says now. “‘Because she didn’t pay her bill.’ Then I realized, Oh my God, she is not legit.”
As Anna bounced around the globe, there was some speculation as to where her means to do this came from, though no one seemed to care that much so long as the bills got paid.
“I thought she had family money,” said Jayma Cardoso, one of the owners of the Surf Lodge in Montauk. Delvey’s father was a diplomat to Russia, one friend was sure. No, another insisted, he was an oil-industry titan. “As far as I knew, her family was the Delvey family that is big in antiques in Germany,” said another acquaintance, a millionaire tech CEO. (It is unclear what family he was referring to.) The CEO met Anna through the boyfriend she was running around with for a while, a futurist on the TED-Talks circuit who’d been profiled in The New Yorker.For about two years, they’d been kind of like a team, showing up in places frequented by the itinerant wealthy, living out of fancy hotels and hosting sceney dinners where the Futurist talked up his app and Delvey spoke of the private club she wanted to open once she turned 25 and came into her trust fund.
Then it was 2016. The Futurist, whose app never materialized, moved to the Emirates, and Anna came to New York on her own, determined to make her arts club a reality, although she worried to Marc Kremers, the London creative director helping her with branding, that the name she’d come up with — the Anna Delvey Foundation, or ADF — was “too narcissistic.”
Early on, Anna and architect Ron Castellano, a friend of her Purple cohort, had scouted a building on the Lower East Side, but it turned out to be too close to a school to get a liquor license, and soon Anna had shifted her aspirations uptown. Through her connections, she’d befriended Gabriel Calatrava, one of the sons of famed architect Santiago. His family’s real-estate advisory company, Calatrava Grace, had helped her “secure the lease,” she informed people, on the perfect space: 45,000 square feet occupying six floors of the historic Church Missions House, a landmarked building on the corner of Park Avenue and 22nd. The heart of the club would be, she said, a “dynamic visual-arts center,” with a rotating array of pop-up shops curated by artist Daniel Arsham, whom she knew from her Purpledays, and exhibitions and installations from blue-chip artists like Urs Fischer, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Tracey Emin. For the inaugural event, Anna told people, the artist Christo had agreed to wrap the building. Some people raised their eyebrows at the grandiosity of this plan, but to others it made sense, in a New York kind of way. The building’s owner, developer Aby Rosen, was no stranger to the private-club genre; a few years earlier, he’d bought a midtown building and opened the Core Club, which housed an art collection. He also happened to own 11 Howard.
With the help of Calatrava executive Michael Jaffe, a former employee of Rosen’s RFR realty firm, Anna soon began meeting with big names in the food-and-beverage world to discuss possibilities in the space. One was André Balazs, who, according to Anna, suggested they add two floors of hotel rooms. Another was Richie Notar, one of the founders of Nobu, who did a walk-through of the building with Anna as she described her vision, which included three restaurants, a juice bar, and a German bakery. “Apparently her family was prominent in Germany,” Notar said, “and funding this big project for her.”
But a project of this size required more capital than even someone of Anna’s apparently considerable resources could manage: approximately $25 million, “in addition to $25m existing,” Anna wrote in an email to a prominent Silicon Valley publicist in 2016. “If you think this is something you could help us with and have anyone in mind who would be a good cultural fit for this project.” But by fall, Anna had turned on the idea of private investors, in part because she didn’t want anyone telling her what to do. “If we were to bring in investors, they would say, ‘Oh, she’s 25; she doesn’t know what she’s doing,’” Anna explained later. “I wanted to build the first one myself.”
To help secure a loan, one of Anna’s “finance friends” had told her to get in touch with Joel Cohen, best known as the prosecutor of Jordan Belfort, a.k.a. the Wolf of Wall Street. Cohen now worked at Gibson Dunn, a large firm known for its real-estate practice. He put her in touch with Andy Lance, a partner who happened to have the exact kind of expertise that Anna was looking for. In the past, she’d complained to friends about feeling condescended to by older male lawyers because of her age and gender. But Lance was different. “He knows how to talk to women,” she said. “And he would explain to me the right amount, without being patronizing.” According to Anna, she and Lance spoke every day. “He was there all the time. He would answer in the middle of the night, or when he was in Turks and Caicos for Christmas.”
After filling out Gibson Dunn’s new-client-intake form, which included checking boxes that confirmed the client had the resources to pay and would not embarrass the firm, Lance put Anna in touch with several large financial institutions, including Los Angeles–based City National Bank and Fortress Investment Group. “Our client Anna Delvey is undertaking a very exciting redevelopment of 281 Park Avenue South, backed by a marquee team for this type of venue and space,” Lance wrote in one email, in which he explained that Anna needed the loan because “her personal assets, which are quite substantial, are located outside the US, some of them in trust with UBS outside the US.” The monies she received, he added, would be “fully secured” by a letter of credit from the Swiss bank. (Lance did not respond to requests for comment.)
When the banker at City National asked to see the UBS statements, he received a list of figures from a man named Peter W. Hennecke. “Please use these for your projections for now,” Hennecke wrote in an email. “I’ll send the physical statements on Monday.”
“Question: Are you from UBS?” the banker replied, puzzled by Hennecke’s AOL address.
No, Anna explained. “Peter is head of my family office.”
With Anna in fund-raising mode, the artists and celebrity friends at her dinners were gradually supplanted by men with “Goyard briefcases and Rolexes, and Hublot, like that Jay-Z lyric,” according to Neff, who at one point looked across the table at Le Coucou and recognized the face of infamous “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who would later be convicted of securities fraud. Anna introduced Shkreli as a “dear friend,” although it was really the only time they’d met, Shkreli told New York in a letter from the penitentiary; Anna was close with one of his executives. “Anna did seem to be a popular ‘woman about town’ who knew everyone,” he wrote. “Even though I was nationally known, I felt like a computer geek next to her.”
As for Neff, she was not as discreet as she had been with Macaulay Culkin, tweeting after the fact that Shkreli had played her and Anna the leaked tracks from Tha Carter V, the delayed Lil Wayne album he’d acquired. Anna was furious, but Neff refused to delete the tweet. “I wanted everybody to know that I heard this album that the world is waiting on! But Anna was pretty mad. She didn’t come down to my desk for maybe three days.”
In the meantime, though, Neff said she had another visitor: Charlie Rosen. Aby Rosen’s sons were generally regarded as pretty-boy trust-fund kids — a few years back, they made headlines for reportedly racing ATVs over piping-plover nests in the Hamptons — but Neff liked them, and when Charlie stopped by one evening, she dropped that she’d recently been to visit the Park Avenue building that one of the guests, a young woman, was leasing from their father for an arts club.
Rosen looked confused. He didn’t appear to have ever heard of Anna or her project. “What room is she staying in?” he asked. When Neff told him, he looked skeptical. “If my dad has someone buying property from him staying here,” he said, “would she be in a Deluxe or would she be in a suite?”
He had a point. A few days later, Neff broached the subject. “Why did you tell me you’re buying property from Aby but you’re not staying in a suite?” she asked.
Anna looked surprised but answered immediately. “She said, ‘You ever have someone do so many favors for you, you kind of just want to pay them back in silence?’”
“Genius,” Neff said.
Soon it was April. Spring was poking its head through the gray New York City sidewalks, and the weather was getting warm enough to sip rosé on rooftops, one of Anna’s favorite activities, although the circle she was doing this with, Neff noticed, was smaller than it had been in the past and mainly consisted of herself; Rachel Williams, a photo editor at Vanity Fair; and the trainer, who, although she was notably older, had taken a motherly interest in her client. “I know a lot of trust-fund babies, and I was impressed that Anna had something that she wanted to do, instead of, you know, living like a Kardashian,” said the trainer. Plus, she said, Anna seemed lonely. Neff noticed the same thing. “What happened to your friends?” she asked Anna after one night out. “Oh,” Anna said vaguely. “They’re all mad I left Purple.” She was too busy for parties, anyway, she said, what with building her business.
It was true that Anna was spending a lot of time working, frowning at her in-box and huffing into the phone. “She was always on the phone with lawyers,” said Neff, who would sort of listen in from the concierge desk. “They were always toning her down. Like, ‘Anna, you’re trying to make something that’s worth this much be worth that much, and that’s just not how it works.’”
Back in December, City National had turned down her loan request — a management decision is how Anna framed it — and while the ever-loyal Andy Lance was reaching out to hedge funds and banks for alternate financing, executives at RFR were pressuring her to come up with the money fast, Anna said. If she didn’t, they were going to give it to another party, rumored to be the Swedish museum Fotografiska. “How do they even pay for that?” Anna fumed. “It’s like two old guys.”
In the meantime, Anna was having cash-flow issues of her own. One night, Anna asked Neff to dinner at Sant Ambroeus in Soho. They were by themselves, which was unusual. Even more unusually, at the end of the meal, Anna’s card was declined. “Here,” she told the waiter, handing him a list of credit-card numbers. In Neff’s admittedly foggy memory, they were in a small book, though it may have been the Notes app on her phone. But she’s clear on what happened next. “The waiter went back to his station and began entering the numbers. There were like 12, and I know the guy tried them all,” she said. “He was trying it and then shaking his head. And then I started to sweat, because I knew the bill was mine.” While the amount — $286 — was a fraction of what Anna usually spent, it was a lot for Neff, who quietly transferred money from her savings to cover the bill. Doing so made her feel sick, but after all the money Anna had spent on her, she understood it was her turn.
What happened to all your friends?” “Oh, they’re all mad I left Purple.
Not long after, Neff’s manager called and asked her to address a delicate issue: It seemed 11 Howard didn’t have a credit card on file for Anna Delvey. Because the hotel had been so new when she arrived, and because she was staying for such an unusually long time, and because she was a client of Aby Rosen’s and a very valued guest, it had agreed to accept a wire transfer. But a month and a half later, no such transfer had arrived, and now Delvey owed the hotel some $30,000, including charges from Le Coucou that she’d been billing to her room.
Neff wasn’t sure what to think. She was sure Anna was good for the money. The day after the Sant Ambroeus debacle, she’d paid her back triple. In cash.
When Anna came by her desk the next day, Neff took her aside and told her that management had said Anna needed to pay her bill. Anna nodded, her eyes inscrutable behind her sunglasses. There was a wire transfer on the way, she said. It should arrive soon. Then, about midway into her shift, Anna came by the desk again and, with a mischievous smile on her face, told Neff to expect a package. When it arrived, Neff opened it to find a case of 1975 Dom Pérignon, with Anna’s instructions to distribute it among the staff. Neff hesitated. Gifts, especially of the liquid variety, needed to be approved by management. “They were like, ‘How do we look approving this if she hasn’t paid us?’ So they went after her. ‘We need the money or we’re locking you out.’”
One morning, Anna showed up to her morning session with the trainer looking visibly upset. “Can we do a life-coaching session?” she pleaded. She was trying to build something, to do something, she went on, and no one was taking her seriously. “They think because I am young, they think I have all this money,” she sobbed. “I told them the money would be there soon. I’m having it transferred.”
The trainer told her to breathe. “I feel like you are in a little over your head,” she offered. “Maybe you just need a break.”
Then something miraculous happened. Citibank sent 11 Howard a wire transfer on behalf of Ms. Anna Delvey for $30,000. Neff called Anna on her cell phone. “Where you at?” she asked. Across the street at Rick Owens, Anna replied. Neff checked the clock: It was her lunch break. When she came through the door of the store, Anna was holding up a T-shirt. “Look what I found,” she said, beaming. “It’s perfect for you.” She was right: The shirt was the exact orangey red of the creepy bathroom scene in The Shining, one of Neff’s favorite movies, and the signature color of the brand Neff was trying to launch, FilmColours. It was also $400. “I’d love to buy it for you,” Anna said.
A few weeks later, Anna told Neff she was going to Omaha. “I’m going to see Warren Buffett,” she announced, grandly. One of her bankers had gotten her on the list to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual investment conference, and she’d decided to bring the executive from Martin Shkreli’s hedge fund, who was fun and a friend of his, on the private jet she’d rented to take them there. “I’ll be back,” she promised Neff.
But there was still a problem with her account at 11 Howard. Despite being repeatedly asked by hotel management, she still hadn’t given the hotel a working credit card, and her charges continued to mount. Following through on their warning, hotel employees changed the code on the lock of Anna’s room and put her things in storage. Neff texted Anna in Omaha to deliver the bad news.
“How can they do that?” Anna asked indignantly, although if she was truly shocked, it didn’t last long. The conference had been great, she said. The best part had happened the very last day, when, having exhausted all the opportunities for luxury Omaha had to offer, Anna and her party had taken a cab driver’s suggestion to check out the zoo. They hadn’t expected much, but then, while they were riding around on their golf carts, they’d stumbled on a private dinner hosted by Buffett for a slew of VIPs. “Everyone was there,” she said. “Like, Bill Gates was there.”
For a little while, they’d watched through the glass, then they’d slipped in and mingled among them.
When Anna got back to 11 Howard, she made her fury known. She was going to purchase web domains in all of the managers’ names, she told Neff, a trick she’d learned from Shkreli: “They’re going to pay me one day,” she said. Also, she was moving out — as soon as she got back from Morocco. Inspired by Khloé Kardashian, she’d reserved a $7,000-a-night riad with a private butler at La Mamounia, an opulent resort in Marrakech, and asked Neff if she wanted to join herself, the trainer, Rachel Williams, and a videographer, who she was hoping would make “a behind-the-scenes documentary” about the process of creating her arts foundation on a vacation. They’d wake up to massages, she said, and spend their days exploring the souk, lounging by the pool. Neff wanted to go, badly. But there was no way the hotel would let her take off eight days. “Just quit,” Anna said airily.
For a day or two, Neff considered it. But her mom told her she had a bad feeling about it. “Nothing in life is free,” she said. So Neff stayed behind, morosely following her friend’s journey on Instagram. “I was pretty jealous,” she said.
As she would find out, the pictures didn’t exactly tell the whole story. Two days in, after coming down with a nasty case of food poisoning, the trainer had gone back to New York early.
About a week later, the trainer got a call from Anna, who was alone at the Four Seasons in Casablanca and hysterical. There was, she sobbed, a problem with her bank. Her credit cards weren’t going through, and the hotel was threatening to call the police. After calming Anna down, the trainer asked to speak to management. “They were like, ‘She is going to be arrested,’” she said.
The trainer was torn: On the one hand, this was not her problem. On the other, Anna was her client, her friend, and someone’s daughter. Offering a prayer to the universe, the trainer gave the hotel her credit-card number and, when it failed to go through, made the requisite calls to her bank. When it still failed to go through, she went the extra mile: She called a friend and had her give her credit-card information. When that failed to work, the hotel conceded the problem might be on their end.
Later, the trainer would recognize this as a substantial gift from the Universe. At the time, she promised the hotel in Casablanca that Anna would make them whole. “Trust me,” she told them. “I know she’s good for it. I just spent two days with her in Marrakech.” When Anna came back on the phone, the trainer told her she was booking her a ticket back to New York. Anna snuffled her thanks. Then she asked for one last favor: “Can you get me first class?” she asked.
A few days later, a silvery Tesla pulled up in front of 11 Howard. Neff, at the concierge desk, felt her cell phone buzz. “Look out the window,” said a familiar German accent. The car’s futuristic doors slowly raised up to reveal Anna. “I’m here to get my stuff,” she said.
Anna was making good on her promise to leave 11 Howard. She was moving downtown to the Beekman Hotel, she told Neff, who watched her drive away in a car that she only later realized someone must have rented to her. Moving didn’t stem Anna’s mounting troubles. Not only did she owe the hotel, but, over in London, Marc Kremers, the designer she’d hired to do her branding work, was getting antsy: The £16,800 fee Anna had promised would arrive by wire almost a year before had yet to materialize, and now emails to Anna’s financial adviser, Peter W. Hennecke, were bouncing back. “Peter passed away last month,” Anna replied. “Please refrain from contacting or mentioning any communication with him going forward.”
In retrospect, her terseness was understandable. Things were rapidly deteriorating for Anna Delvey in New York. Twenty days into her stay, the Beekman Hotel, having realized it did not have a working credit card on file and having not received the promised wire transfer for her balance of $11,518.59, locked Anna out of her room and confiscated her belongings. A subsequent two-day stay at the W Hoteldowntown ended in a similar fashion, and by July 5, Anna was effectively homeless, wandering the streets in threadbare Alexander Wang sportswear.
Late one night, she made her way to the trainer’s apartment and dialed her from outside. “I’m right near your building,” she said. “Do you think we could talk?”
The trainer hesitated: She was in the middle of a date. But there was a desperate note in Anna’s voice. She made her way to her lobby, where she found Anna with tears streaming down her face. “I’m trying to do this thing,” she sobbed. “And it’s so hard.”
Maybe she should call her family, the trainer suggested. She would, Anna replied, but her parents were in Africa. “Do you mind if I crash at your place tonight?” No, the trainer said, she had a date.
“I really just don’t want be alone,” Anna sniffled. “I might do something.”
The date hid in the bedroom while the trainer made a bed for her unexpected houseguest and offered her a glass of water.
“Do you have any Pellegrino?” Anna asked. There was one large bottle left. Anna ignored the two glasses placed on the counter and began swilling from the bottle. “I’m so tired,” she yawned.
As Anna slept, the trainer’s spidey sense began to tingle. “I mean, I’m born and raised in New York,” she told me later. “I’m not stupid.” She texted Rachel Williams, who told her about what had happened at La Mamounia: Apparently, after the trainer returned to New York, the credit card Anna had used to book the hotel was found to be nonfunctional, and when Anna was unable to produce a new form of payment and a pair of threatening goons appeared in the doorway, the photo editor was forced to put the balance — $62,000, more than she was paid in a year — on the Amex she sometimes used for work expenses. Anna had promised her a wire transfer, but a month later, all Rachel received was $5,000, and her excuses had turned “Kafkaesque.”
The following morning, the trainer resolved to draw a clear boundary. After lending Anna a clean (and flattering) dress, she sent her on her way with a gratis motivational speech. But when Anna walked out the door, she left her laptop behind. The trainer was having none of it. She deposited the computer at the front desk and texted Anna that she could pick it up there.
That evening, the trainer got a call from her doorman. Anna was in the lobby. He’d told her that the trainer was out, at which point she’d asked for access to her suite. When he refused, Anna had resolved to wait for the trainer to return home.
“Let me know when she goes,” the trainer told the doorman.
But hours passed and Anna didn’t budge. “They were like, She’s still here. She’s texting,” the trainer recalls. “I was like, Oh my God, I’m a prisoner of my own house.” It wasn’t until after midnight that Anna finally left the building.
The relief the trainer felt soon turned into worry. “I started calling the hotels to see where she was staying, and each hotel was like, ‘This girl,’ she said.
She found out why later that month, when both the Beekman and the W Hotel filed charges against Anna for theft of services. WANNABE SOCIALITE BUSTED FOR SKIPPING OUT ON PRICEY HOTEL BILLS, blared the headline in the Post, which referenced an incident in which Anna attempted to leave the restaurant at Le Parker without paying. “Why are you making a big deal about this?” she’d protested to police. “Give me five minutes and I can get a friend to pay.”
But no friends arrived. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding, as Anna told Todd Spodek, the criminal attorney she hired to fight the misdemeanor charges. Maybe the poised young woman in the Audrey Hepburn dress who’d cold-called him on his cell phone repeatedly, insisting it was an emergency until he’d agreed to come into his office on a Saturday, really was a wealthy German heiress, he thought, as his 4-year-old pasted Paw Patrol stickers up one of Anna’s bare arms, and her credit cards had gotten jammed up, or someone had taken away her trust fund. Just in case, Spodek, whose everyday clientele includes grifters, dog-murderers, femme fatales, rapists, and cybercriminals, among other miscreants, had her sign a lien on all of her assets, one that would ensure he got paid. On her way out, Anna asked a favor. “I kind of need a place to stay,” she said. Spodek demurred. The last thing his wife wanted was for him to bring his work home with him.
Anna again got in touch with the trainer, who did not invite her to stay but instead organized an intervention at a nearby restaurant, during which she and Rachel Williams attempted to get answers: about why Anna had done what she’d done, who she really was, if she’d ever planned on paying anyone back. Anna hemmed and hawed and dissembled and prevaricated and, as the women got increasingly angry, allowed two fat tears to roll down her cheeks. “I’ll have enough to pay everyone,” she sniffled. “Once I get the lease signed …”
“Anna,” the trainer said, summoning her last shred of patience. “The building has been rented.”
She held up her iPhone and showed her the headline: FOTOGRAFISKA SIGNS A LEASE FOR ENTIRE 45K SF AT ABY ROSEN’S BUILDING.
“That’s fake news,” Anna said.
Is “Fotografiska really get the building?” sighed the tiny, accented voice after the recording identifying the call as coming from Rikers Island, where Anna Delvey, a.k.a. Anna Sorokin, has been remanded without bail since October 2017.
As it turned out, Anna’s hotel bills were merely the first loose threads in a web of fraudulent activity, one that began to unravel in November 2016, after she submitted documents claiming a net worth of €60 million in Swiss accounts to City National Bank in pursuit of a $22 million dollar loan. The following month, she submitted the same documents to Fortress in an attempt to secure a $25 million to $35 million loan. After that bank asked her for $100,000 to perform due diligence, she convinced a representative at City National to extend her a $100,000 line of credit, which she then wired to Fortress. Then, apparently spooked by Fortress’s decision to send representatives to Switzerland to personally check her assets, she withdrew herself from the process halfway through, wiring the remaining $55,000 to a Citibank account that she used for “personal expenses … shopping at Forward by Elyse Walker, Apple, and Net-a-Porter,” according to the New York District Attorney’s office. Then, in April, she deposited $160,000 worth of bad checks into the same account, managing to withdraw $70,000 before they were returned, which is how she managed to pay off 11 Howard and, ostensibly, buy Neff’s T-shirt and the domain names of the managers of the hotel. (“They called me down to the office. They said, ‘Neff, did you know about this?’ And I started dying laughing. I thought it was a boss move.”) In May, Anna convinced the company Blade to charter her a $35,000 jet to Omaha by sending them a forged confirmation for a wire transfer from Deutsche Bank. It might have helped that she had the business card of the CEO, whom she’d met in passing at Soho House but who says he didn’t actually know her at all. Not wanting to leave Anna homeless after their intervention last summer, the trainer and a friend agreed to put Anna up at a hotel for one night, after having the hotel remove the mini-bar and giving strict instructions not to allow her any room service. She subsequently checked in to the Bowery Hotel for two nights, sending the hotel a receipt for a wire transfer from Deutsche Bank that never came. Rachel Williams, City National, and others also received phony wire-transfer receipts, which a representative of the bank identified as forged. Anna’s “family adviser,” the late Peter W. Hennecke, seems to have been a fictional character; his cell-phone number belonged to a now-defunct burner phone from a supermarket, New York found. (A living Peter Hennecke did not return calls for comment.) Later in the summer, with her misdemeanor charges pending, Anna deposited two bad checks into an account at Signature Bank, netting her $8,200, which is how she managed to take what she said was a “planned trip” to California, where she was arrested outside of Passages in Malibu and brought back to New York to face six counts of grand larceny and attempted grand larceny, in addition to theft of services, according to the indictment. “I like L.A.,” she giggled when I visited her at Rikers this past March. “L.A. in the winter, New York in spring and autumn, and Europe in summer.”
People looked over curiously. “She’s like a unicorn in there,” Todd Spodek, Anna’s lawyer, had told me. “Everyone else is in there for like, stabbing their baby daddy.” He had mentioned that his client was taking incarceration unusually in stride, and indeed, this appeared to be the case.
“This place is not that bad at all actually,” Anna told me, eyes sparkling behind her Céline glasses. “People seem to think it’s horrible, but I see it as like, this sociological experiment.”
She’d made friends, of course. The murderers were the most interesting to her. “There are couple of girls who are here for financial crimes as well,” she told me. “This one girl, she’s been stealing other people’s identities. I didn’t realize it was so easy.”
Over the course of three months, I spoke to Anna over the phone and visited her several times, occasionally bringing her copies of Forbes, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal at her request. Clad in a beige jumpsuit, her $800 highlights faded and her $400 eyelash extensions long fallen away, she looked like a normal 27-year-old girl, which is what she is.
Anna Sorokin was born in Russia in 1991, and moved to Germany in 2007, when she was 16, with her younger brother and her parents, who, after being independently tracked down by and speaking with New York, asked to remain anonymous, as news of their daughters arrest has not yet reached the small rural community where they live.
Anna attended high school in Eschweiler, a small working-class town 60 kilometers outside Cologne, near the Belgian and Dutch border. Her classmates remember her as quiet, with an unwieldy command of German. Her father had worked as a truck driver and later as an executive at a transport company until it became insolvent in 2013, whereupon he opened a heating-and-cooling business specializing in energy-efficient devices. Anna’s father was circumspect about the family’s finances, possibly out of a not-unreasonable fear of being held responsible for his daughter’s debts, which it was suggested to New York multiple times are larger and more wide-ranging than officially documented. “She screwed basically everyone,” said the acquaintance in Berlin, who passed on the names of several individuals who were said to have had amounts large and small borrowed or stolen but were too embarrassed to come forward. (Also paranoid: “I heard she commissions these stories,” I was told more than once, after I reached out to alleged victims. “They’re strategic leaks.”)
In any case, according to Anna’s father: “Until now, we have never heard of any trust fund.”
That said, he went on, the family did support her to an extent after Anna graduated from high school in 2011. She moved first to London, where she attended Central Saint Martins College, then she dropped out and returned to Berlin, where she interned in the fashion department of a public-relations firm before relocating to Paris, where she landed a coveted internship at Purple magazine and became Anna Delvey. Her parents, who say they do not recognize the surname, told New York: “We always paid for her accommodations, her rent, and other matters. She assured us these costs were the best investment. If ever she needed something more at one point or another, it didn’t matter. The future was always bright.”
Anna, in jail, told me: “My parents had high expectations. They always trusted me with my decision-making. I guess they regret it now.”
Over the course of our conversations, Anna never admitted any guilt, although she did say she felt bad about what happened with Rachel Williams. “I am very upset that things went that way and I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said. “But I really can’t do anything about it, being in here.”
She expressed frustration about not being able to bail herself out. “If they were doubting — ‘Oh, she can’t pay for anything’— why not give me bail and see?” she challenged. “If I was such a fraud, it would be such an easy resolution. Will she bail herself out?”
She was frustrated with the New York Post’s characterization of her as a “wannabe socialite” — “I was never trying to be a socialite,” she pointed out. “I had dinners, but they were work dinners. I wanted to be taken seriously” — and the District Attorney’s portrayal of her as, as Anna put it, “a greedy idiot” who had committed a kind of harebrained Ponzi scheme in order to go shopping. “If I really wanted the money, I would have better and faster ways to get some,” she groused. “Resilience is hard to come by, but not capital.”
She seemed most interested in expressing that her plans to create the Anna Delvey Foundation were real. She’d had all of those conversations and meetings and sent all of those emails and commissioned those materials because she thought it was actually going to happen. “I had what I thought was a great team around me, and I was having fun,” she said. Sure, she said, she might have done a few things wrong. “But that doesn’t diminish the hundred things I did right.”
Maybe it could have happened. In this city, where enormous amounts of invisible money trade hands every day, where glass towers are built on paperwork promises, why not? If Aby Rosen, the son of Holocaust survivors, could come to New York and fill skyscrapers full of art, if the Kardashians could build a billion-dollar empire out of literally nothing, if a movie star like Dakota Johnson could sculpt her ass so that it becomes the anchor of a major franchise, why couldn’t Anna Delvey? During the course of my reporting, people kept asking: Why this girl? She wasn’t superhot, they pointed out, or super-charming; she wasn’t even very nice. How did she manage to convince an enormous amount of cool, successful people that she was something she clearly was not? Watching the Rikers guard shove Fast Companyinto a manila envelope, I realized what Anna had in common with the people she’d been studying in the pages of that magazine: She saw something others didn’t. Anna looked at the soul of New York and recognized that if you distract people with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indicia of wealth, if you show them the money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing was: It was so easy.
“Money, like, there’s an unlimited amount of capital in the world, you know?” Anna said to me at one point. “But there’s limited amounts of people who are talented.”
BY RACHEL DELOACHE WILLIAMS
She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses, and showed me a glamorous, frictionless world of hotel living and Le Coucou dinners and infrared saunas and Moroccan vacations. And then she made my $62,000 disappear.
According to my closest friends and various suspect Internet sources, turning 29 on January 29, 2017 marked my golden birthday. At the time, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I had a gut feeling about my 30th year: it was going to be special; it was going to be good.
It was a total disaster.
It began with Anna. In her signature black athleisure wear and oversize Céline sunglasses, she sat beside me in the S.U.V., pecking at her phone. Seemingly everything she owned was packed into Rimowa suitcases and stacked in the trunk, just behind our heads. We were running late. Anna was always late. Our S.U.V. hummed along the cobblestones of Crosby Street as we drove from 11 Howard, the hotel Anna had called home for three months, to the Mercer, the hotel Anna planned to move into when we got back from our trip. The bellhops at the Mercer helped us to off-load her bags (all but one), and they checked them away to await Anna’s return. Our errand complete, we climbed back into the car and set off for J.F.K. two hours before our flight: we were Marrakech-bound.
Anna taking an iPhone photo during a daytrip to Kasbah Tamadot Sir Richard Bransons resort in Moroccos High Atlas...
Anna, taking an iPhone photo during a day-trip to Kasbah Tamadot, Sir Richard Branson’s resort in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains. Anna returned for a stay at Kasbah Tamadot after leaving La Mamounia.
I first met Anna the year prior, in early 2016, at Happy Ending, a restaurant-lounge on Broome Street with a bistro on the ground floor, and a popular nightclub past the bouncer one flight down. I was with friends in the lounge downstairs. It was a group that I saw almost exclusively on nights out, fashion friends, whom I’d met since moving to the city in 2010. We walked in as the space was kicking into gear, not empty but not crowded. Young men and women made laps through machine-pumped fog, scouting for action and a place to settle in, as they sipped their vodka soda through plastic black straws. We made our way to the right and back, where the fog and people were denser and the music was louder.
I can’t remember which arrived first: the expectant bucket of ice and stack of glasses, or “Anna Delvey”—but I knew that she had appeared and with her came bottle service. She was a stranger to me, and yet not unknown. I’d seen her on Instagram, smiling at events, drinking at parties, oftentimes alongside my own friends and acquaintances. I’d seen that @annadelvey (since changed to @annadlvv) had 40K followers.
The new arrival, in a clingy black dress and flat Gucci sandals, slid into the banquette. She had a cherubic face with oversize blue eyes and pouty lips. Her features and proportions were classical—almost anachronistic—with a roundness that would suit Ingres or John Currin. She greeted me and her ambiguously accented voice was unexpectedly high-pitched.
Pleasantries led to discussion of how Anna first came into our friend group. She said she had interned for Purple magazine, in Paris (I’d seen her in photos with the magazine’s editor-in-chief), and evidently traveled in similar social circles. It was the quintessential nice-to-meet-you-in-New York conversation: hellos, exchange of niceties, how do you know X, what do you do for work?
I CAN’T REMEMBER WHICH ARRIVED FIRST: THE EXPECTANT BUCKET OF ICE AND STACK OF GLASSES, OR “ANNA DELVEY”—BUT I KNEW THAT SHE HAD APPEARED AND WITH HER CAME BOTTLE SERVICE.
“I work at Vanity Fair,” I told her. The usual dialogue ensued: “in the photo department,” I elaborated. “Yes, I love it. I’ve been there for six years.” She was attentive and engaged. She ordered another bottle of vodka. She picked up the tab.
Not long after we first met, I was invited to join Anna and a mutual friend for dinner at Harry’s, a steakhouse downtown, not far from my office. The vibe at Harry’s was distinctly masculine, fussy but not frilly, with leather seating and wood-paneled walls. Anna was there when I arrived, and the friend came a few minutes later. We were shown to our table, and my company ordered oysters and a round of espresso martinis. Conversation went along, as did the cocktails. I’d never had an espresso martini, but it went down just fine.
Anna told us huffily that she’d spent the day in meetings with lawyers. “What for?” I asked. She lit up. She was hard at work on her art foundation—a “dynamic visual-arts center dedicated to contemporary art,” she explained, referring vaguely to a family trust. She planned to lease the historic Church Missions House, a building on Park Avenue South and 22nd Street, to house a night lounge, bar, art galleries, studio space, restaurants, and a members-only club. In my line of work, I had often encountered ambitious, well-off individuals, so though her undertaking sounded grand in scale and promising in theory, my sincere enthusiasm hardly outweighed a measured skepticism.
For the rest of 2016, I saw Anna every few weekends. As a visiting German citizen, she’d explained, she didn’t have a full-time residence. She was living in the Standard, High Line, not far from my small apartment in Manhattan’s West Village. Anna intrigued me, and she seemed eager to be friends. I was flattered. I saw her on adventure-filled nights out, for drinks and sometimes dinner, usually with a group, but occasionally just the two of us. Towards autumn of that same year, Anna told me she was returning to Cologne, where she said she was from, just before the expiration of her visa.
Nearly half a year later, she came back.
On Saturday, May 13, 2017, we landed in Marrakech. Our hotel sent a V.I.P. service to greet us at the airport. We were escorted through Customs and taken to two awaiting Land Rovers. After a 10-minute drive, we pulled up to a palatial compound and entered through its gates. At the front entrance, we were welcomed by a host of men wearing fez caps and traditional Moroccan attire. We had arrived at our singularly opulent destination. Miss Delvey, our host, opted for a tour of the grounds for her and her guests. We proceeded directly, not having any need for keys or a traditional check-in procedure, since our villa was staffed with a full-time butler and, according to our host, all billing had been settled in advance.
The vacation was Anna’s idea. She again needed to leave the States in order to reset her ESTA visa, she said. Instead of returning home to Germany, she suggested we take a trip somewhere warm. It had been a long time since my last vacation. I happily agreed that we should explore options, thinking we’d find off-season fares to the Dominican Republic or Turks and Caicos. Anna suggested Marrakech; she’d always wanted to go. She picked La Mamounia, a five-star luxury resort ranked among the best in the world, and knowing that her selection was cost-prohibitive for my budget, she nonchalantly offered to cover my flights, the hotel, and expenses. She reserved a $7,000/night private riad, a traditional Moroccan villa with an interior courtyard, three bedrooms, and a pool, and forwarded me the confirmation e-mail. Due to a seemingly minor snafu, I’d put the plane tickets on my American Express card, with Anna promising to reimburse me promptly. Since I did this all the time for work, I didn’t give it a second thought.
Anna also invited a personal trainer, along with a friend of mine—a photographer—whom, at a dinner the week before our trip, Anna had asked to come as a documentarian, someone to capture video. She was thinking of making a documentary about the creation of her art foundation, and she wanted to experience what it felt like to have someone around with a camera. Plus, it’d be fun to have video from the trip, she said. I thought this was a bit ridiculous, but also entertaining, and why not? The four of us stayed in the private villa together. Anna and I shared the largest room.
We spent our first day and a half exploring all that La Mamounia had to offer. We roamed the gardens, relaxed in the hammam, swam in our villa’s private pool, took a tour of the wine cellar, and ate dinner to the intoxicating rhythms of live Moroccan music, before capping our night with cocktails in the jazzy Churchill bar. In the morning, Anna arranged for a private tennis lesson. We met her afterward for breakfast at the poolside buffet. Between adventures, our butler appeared, as if by magic, with fresh watermelon and chilled bottles of rosé.
Anna was no stranger to decadence. When she returned to N.Y.C. in early 2017, after months away, she checked into 11 Howard, a trendy hotel in SoHo. Her routine dinner spot became Le Coucou, winner of the James Beard Award for best new restaurant that same year, which was on the ground level of her hotel. Buckwheat fried Montauk eel to start and then the bourride: her dish of choice. She befriended the staff, and even the chef, Daniel Rose, who, upon her request, obligingly made off-the-menu bouillabaisse just for her. Dinners were accompanied by abundant white wine.
Her days were spent at meetings and on phone calls, often in her hotel. She regularly went to Christian Zamora for $400 full eyelash extensions, or $140 touch-ups here and there. She went to Marie Robinson Salon for color, Sally Hershberger for cuts. She toured multi-million-dollar apartments with over-eager realtors and chartered a private plane for a weekend trip to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting in Omaha. All things in excess: she shopped, ate, and drank. Usually wearing a Supreme brand hoodie, workout pants, and sneakers, she embodied a lazy sort of luxury.
Anna checked into 11 Howard on a Sunday in February and that same day invited me to lunch. She’d texted me occasionally while she’d been gone, excited to get back and eager to catch up. I wondered if she kept in touch with other friends that way. She had a directness that could be off-putting and a sort of comical overconfidence that I found equal parts abhorrent and amusing. She isolated herself, and I felt privileged to be one of the few people whom she liked and trusted. Through past experiences, both personal and professional, I was casually accustomed to the lifestyle and quirks of moneyed people, though I had no trust fund or savings of my own. Her world wasn’t foreign to me—I was comfortable there—and I was pleased that she could tell, that she accepted me as someone who “got it.”
I met her at Mamo, on West Broadway. Anna had settled into the L-shaped booth closest to the door. Above her hung an oversize illustration of Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo, both holding guns, floating above a dark cityscape. “ASFALTO CHE SCOTTA,” it read, in caps-locked Italian. She had come directly from the Apple Store, where she’d purchased a new laptop and two new iPhones—one for her international number and one for a new local number, she said. She ordered a Bellini, and I followed her lead.
When we finally left, it was almost five o’clock. We walked towards Anna’s hotel and she invited me in for a drink. We passed through 11 Howard’s modern lobby, heading straight for the steel spiral staircase to the left, which swooped twice around a thick column, rising to the floor above. On the second level, we entered a large living room called the Library.
The room’s design had distinctly Scandinavian overtones. My eyes scanned the setup and paused on a photograph that hung in a frame across from the concierge desk, a black-and-white image of an empty theater—part of a series by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. Light emanated from a seemingly blank, rectangular movie screen, casting its glow out from the center of the composition onto the empty stage, seats, and theater. Sugimoto used a large-format camera and set his exposure to be the full length of a film, hoping to capture a movie’s thousands of still frames within a single image. The result was otherworldly. Looking at his work always reminded me of Shakespeare, a play within a play. It captured kinetic energy, portentous and alive with emotion and light. The viewing experience was meta and inverted: I was the audience, looking into an empty theater, beneath a blank screen. Anything was possible, or maybe it’d already happened. Maybe it was all already there.
After that day in February, Anna and I became fast friends. The world was charmed when she was around—the normal rules didn’t seem to apply. Her lifestyle was full of convenience, and its easy materialism was seductive. She began seeing a personal trainer and invited me to join. The sessions were her treat, as she generously insisted that working out was more fun with a friend. We went as frequently as three or four times a week, often ending our sessions with a visit to the infrared sauna.
I saw Anna most mornings. During the day, she’d text me frequently. After work, I’d stop by 11 Howard on my walk home. We’d regularly visit the Library for wine before going downstairs to Le Coucou for late dinners.
Anna did most of the talking. She held court, having befriended the hotel staff and servers, with me as her trusted adviser and loyal confidante. She would tell me about her meetings with restaurateurs, hedge-fund managers, lawyers, and bankers—and her frustration over delays with the lease signing. (She was set on the Church Missions House.) She mused about chefs she’d like to bring in, artists she esteemed, exhibitions that were opening. She was savvy. I felt a mixture of pity and admiration for Anna. She didn’t have many friends, and she wasn’t close with her family. She said that her relationship with her parents felt rooted more in business than in love. But she was strong. Her impulsivity and a sort of tactlessness had caused a rift between Anna and the friends through whom I’d met her, but I felt that I understood her and would be there for her when others were not.
Anna was a character. Her default setting was haughty, but she didn’t take herself too seriously. She was quirky and erratic. She acted with the entitlement and impulsivity of a once spoiled, seldom disciplined child—offset by a tendency to befriend workers rather than management, and to let slip the occasional comment suggesting a deeper empathy. (“It’s a lot of responsibility to have people working for you; people have families to feed. That’s no joke.”) In the male-dominated business world, she was unapologetically ambitious and I liked this about her.
She was audacious where I was reserved, and irreverent where I was polite. We balanced each other: I normalized her eccentric behavior, as she challenged my sense of propriety and dared me to have fun. As an added bonus, she paid for everything.
It was late on Monday afternoon, after almost two full days in La Mamounia’s walled palace. It was time to venture out. Anna wanted two things: piles of spices worthy of an Instagram photo and a place to buy some Moroccan kaftans. La Mamounia’s concierge arranged everything: within minutes we had a tour guide and set off with a car and driver. Our van came to a stop and we stepped out one by one, fresh from our sheltered resort life, into the dusty warmth of the medina’s mysterious maze.
“Can you make this dress, but with black linen?” Anna asked of a woman in Maison Du Kaftan. Before the woman could reply, Anna continued, “I’ll take one in black and one in white linen and, Rachel, I’d love to get one for you.” I scanned the store’s racks as Anna tried on a bright red jumpsuit and a range of gauzy sheer dresses. I tried on a few things but, wary of the iffy fabric content and high prices, I soon joined the videographer and trainer in the shop’s seating area for glasses of mint tea. Anna went to pay. Her debit card was declined.
“Did you tell your banks that you were traveling?” I asked. “No,” was her reply. Then I wasn’t surprised that such a purchase would be flagged. Anna asked to borrow money, promising to reimburse me the following week. I agreed, careful to keep track of the receipt. We wandered the medina until dusk. Back in the van, we went directly to La Sultana for dinner. I paid for that, too, adding it to my “tab.”
On Tuesday, we were walking through La Mamounia’s lobby, leaving for a visit to the Jardin Majorelle, when a hotel employee waved Anna to a stop. “Miss Delvey, may we speak with you?” he said, as he tactfully pulled her aside. “Is everything O.K.?” I asked, when she rejoined the group. “Yes,” Anna reassured me. “I just need to call my bank.”
The next morning, I, too, was stopped as I passed through the lobby: “Miss Williams, have you seen Miss Delvey?” I sent Anna to the concierge. She was agitated by the inconvenience. You could always tell when Anna was agitated: she made almost comical huffy noises (“ugh, why!”) and typed furiously on her phone. She left the villa and came back shortly after, ostensibly relieved that the situation was being resolved.
We set off on a day trip to the Atlas Mountains and returned to Marrakech after dinner that same evening, re-entering La Mamounia through the main lobby. Two men stepped forward as Anna approached. They pulled her aside and she sat down to make a call, as the videographer and I lingered awkwardly to the side. (The trainer was sick in bed for the second day in a ro
每一集的开头都已经说的很清楚,除了真实的部份,其他部份都是编造的。为什么看这部剧的人要各种去扒他真实情况,去扒真实的Ana是怎么样的,然后来给这部剧打低分?你们想要的真实,难道不是应该去看新闻或者看纪录片?这个还是个剧情片啊!他只是因为Ana的故事有感而发,而创作了这样一部剧。
这部戏里那么多亮眼的人物刻画和表现,就都被你们的低分掩埋了。
你们没有看到记者因为是一个女生,职业生涯做错了一件事,而这件事还仅仅是因为太过信任自己作为朋友的同事,而导致自己一直被遗弃在角落,还要被背叛自己的同事领导吗?而另一边华尔街的男高管,做错了事情,错误的给Ana背书,得到的惩罚确实升职加薪,仅仅是打球的球场从1号换到了12号。这是多么鲜明的对比与讽刺!
你们没有看到那个想要借Ana上位的《名利场》女生,又做婊子又立牌坊,但最后却自己又是出书,又是被伟德体育最新网站卡公司waive credit,名利双收,什么都没有损失,还要一把眼泪一把鼻涕在法庭哭泣,最后恶有恶报了嘛?
你们没有看到Ana的父母告诉记者,有些孩子就是超出了你的能力,而放弃了Ana吗?这是多么现实,并多么无奈。
就,明明这部剧 值得一个四星半!
剩下半颗星的确是我也不喜欢ana的high pitch嗓音
这部剧改编自真实事件,聚焦一起著名的“名媛骗局”,来自纽约杂志热门文章《How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People》:讲述的是一个名叫安娜·德尔维的女子自称是德国巨富豪门之女,从ins开始吸引了不少人的关注,成为纽约社交圈的热门girl,认识许多圈中富人名流,拿走了他们的钱,还差点办起了一家豪华俱乐部。但此后,安娜被指控是诈骗犯,她的真实身份是俄罗斯人安娜·索罗金。她从银行、所结交的朋友处骗取钱财,骗过酒店工作人员入住五星级酒店......
把纽约名流耍得团团转的顶级女骗子“安娜”,真正的故事是怎样的?是否映照了整个时代的缩影?假扮名媛的她,是骗子,是天才,还是两者兼具?看完了这部剧的第一集,我认识了什么是“白领犯罪”,此外我还整理了一些有意思的口语表达,一起分享给你~
白领犯罪“white-collar crime”一词于 1939 年创造于美国,现在已成为企业和政府专业人士实施的各种欺诈行为的代名词。一般来说,白领犯罪是纯粹为了经济利益而犯下的非暴力犯罪。 剧中的安娜正是一个活生生的例子,她瞒天过海,伪装成了名媛,利用这个身份所能够获得的信息或资源的特权,对银行进行欺骗和隐瞒并且违反信任,企图窃取数百万美元。最后以犯了“白领重罪”而被捕入狱,她背后的动机便是为了获得金钱以及服务。
pull yourself up by your bootstraps,字面上是拉紧靴子的鞋带站立,真正的含义则是奋发图强。“bootstrap”是靴子的鞋带,“pull yourself up”就是把自己拉起来。
可以这样记:就是不管事情有多么困难即使只能从拉紧鞋带开始你也要努力完成。比如说: Pull yourself up by the bootstrap and finish the project.你要奋发图强,努力地完成这个企划案。
let's drop it=let's drop the subject在口语中常用来结束当前谈话以及转换话题。“drop”除了“落下”的意思之外,还可以表示“问题、事件、话题等完了、结束、停止”。比如说:Let's drop it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. 别提了,我再也不想说那件事了。
flattery的意思是奉承、恭维、谄媚。其实无论东西方人,听到恭维话的第一反应还是比较高兴的。适度的说有利于人与人之间的交流,也能够使气氛变得轻松活跃,对于比较陌生的人,还有利于拉近双方的距离。
正因为flattery的种种好处,所以才有了这句俚语。无论是古代还是现在,flattery will get you everywhere!但是要注意,好的恭维应该是真心称赞别人所引以为自豪的东西,不要过了头哦~
a load of bull=a lot of bull表示一派胡言。bull原意是“公牛”,但在这里是指“胡说八道”或“完全错误的事情”,是一个俚语,相当于bullshit。这个词虽然粗俗却很流行,bull或B.S.其实是bullshit的委婉说法。
这个短语在Urban Dictionary的解释是:
当谈话双方都认为自己是对的,再争下去没有意义时,他们就会说agree to disagree来结束争论。也就是双方保留意见,“求同存异”的意思啦。
在生活中,我们常常有要提出自己不同意见的时候,特别是在工作中。但是当意见提出来后,常常会有达不成一致的情况,这时候就可以说: Let's agree to disagree. 让我们保留各自意见,接受分歧的存在。
在日常用语中,“plea” 表示的是“请求、恳求”。但是大多数情况下在法律判决书、状书中常用来表示“认罪”,如:Early pleas to lesser offences. 提早承认较轻控罪。
shed light on这个词组字面上是“打一道灯光来照亮”,引申为使某事物更明朗、容易理解,意思和explain这个词基本一样。
英文中常以“光明”、“黑暗作为“知识”、“无知”的对比。比如:in the dark是指“处于不明就里的状态”反过来in light of则是“借助于…的启发”。 比如说:This discussion has shed light on the problem. 这次讨论给解决问题带来了曙光。
knock off有很多意思如“下班,别闹了”等,但是在这里是一个比较口语化的日常用词,指“山寨货、仿制品”,尤其指昂贵产品的山寨版。 比如要问一件产品是真货还是假货,你可以这么说:Is that the real thing or a knock-off? 那是真品还是仿制品?
dying是die的现在分词,表示“临终的,垂死的”,进行时态表将来。但注意了,可不要将 be dying to 解释为“处于临死状态”,它的意思其实是“迫切渴望”。
在我们中文里有一个常见的说法,叫做“想什么想得要死”,因此 be dying to 可引申为“非常的渴望做某事”。 比如说:I'm dying to see you soon. 我渴望能很快见到你。
一说起tap很多人应该会想到“tap water”自来水这个词,而“tap”则表示“水龙头”。“tap”在这里则是它的引申词义,表示“利用、开发、发掘”。当表示这个意思时,常与介词into连用,即tap into sth。比如说:tap into your brain to get new ideas. 开动脑筋获得新想法。
其他与tap相关的搭配:
tap sb for sth 向…索要,向…乞讨(尤指钱)
tap in/out 输入,输出(信息、数字、字母等)
tap out(跟着音乐节奏)轻轻打拍子、(用计算机或移动电话)写,敲出,键入
这个"LOL"除了表示大家常说的英雄联盟游戏之外,还有另一个意思哦!那就是"Laughing out loud"的缩写,大声笑出来,一般在文字聊天的时候会用到。 比如:LOL! That was so funny! 笑死我了,那真是太搞笑了!
STFU是“Shut The Fuck Up ”的缩写,表示很生气的让人闭上臭嘴,是一句脏话(好孩子勿学)。
so be it. 就那么样吧。常在表达不甘心,但又不得不放弃、认输的时候使用,十分无奈的感觉。 语法小知识:so be it不是虚拟语气,而是倒装句。原来的顺序应该是:let it be so, 倒装之后就省略了let. 意思是:“就让it如此或怎样吧。”
bat是“球棒”的意思,right off the bat字面解释就是“刚刚击出一球”。我们知道棒球和球棒都十分坚硬,所以球棒一击中棒球,棒球就立即会以非常高的速度弹飞出去。据说球速是每小时一百英里,right off the bat就出自棒球一接触球棒立即飞离而去,给人一种即刻出动的感觉。
比如说:Right off the bat I knew she was the girl for me.一瞬间,我明白了,她就是我的心上人。
在生活中说“我讨厌你”我们常用“I hate you”来表达,hate 通常为语气较强的动词,常用于口语或非正式英语中,无足轻重地谈论所讨厌的人或物,如某种食物。 loathe的意思是“极不喜欢;厌恶”, 这个词的厌恶程度是非常深的,比 hate 和 dislike 严重多了,但也可以用于非正式场合指不太重要的事情,表示确实不喜欢。 有两个固定搭配: loathe sb / sth 讨厌某人
loathe doing sth 讨厌做某事
这里的make a pledge是发誓、作出承诺的意思,相当于我们熟悉的promise,但pledge这个词更加正式一些。比如歌曲《Sealed With A Kiss》里就有一句歌词写到“Oh, let us make a pledge to meet in September ”喔,让我们约定九月再相见吧。感兴趣的朋友可以去听听看,一首非常经典的英文歌~
dropper可以解释为“随口说出什么的人”。a name-dropper就是指由于虚荣心作怪,以仿佛很熟悉的口吻谈到著名人物名字,并且到处显摆的人,明显在自抬身价啦。 所以‘name-dropper’就是“自抬身价者”的意思。这种人往往是在说大话,甚至在胡说八道,所以人们早晚不会信他的。
ass-kisser / ass-kissing 马屁精。很好理解,吻屁股的人,就是马屁精。比如说:Oh, he's such an ass-kisser. I can't believe the boss falls for it! 喔,他真是个大马屁精,我不敢相信老板吃他那一套。 也可表示”拍马屁“这一行为,kiss sb's ass就是指拍某人的马屁。
amped是指“激动的,兴奋的”。如果你对某事amped,这说明你非常激动且迫不及待的让这件事发生。比如说:"I'm so amped for the game tonight!” 我超级期待今晚的比赛!
breathe是呼吸的意思,neck是脖子的意思。breathe down one's neck 很容易联想到勒着脖子使人难以呼吸,引申为令人窒息的逼迫,对某人盯得特别紧的意思。
lay low本意有宅在家,避风头的意思,理解为低调也非常合适,其实这里和中文也有相合的地方:中文的“低”和英文的“low”,都有行事不太惹人注目的意思。所以lay low字面意义是“停在低的地方”,实际上就是指“保持低调”。比如说因为新冠,我们得在家宅(低调)一段时间。你可以这么说:We have to lay low for a while because of the Coronavirus.
喜欢的话,点个赞支持一下呗~
|本文作者:Zohra
|审校编辑:Juliet
还不错的爽剧,剧本故事矛盾线充足,一集刻画一个关键人物,推进的节奏到后几集反而更精彩。
安娜和女记者分析已经很多,想探讨一下剧里其他女配的角色。
女友Rachael: 律师Todd质询她前,我多少对她是同情的,Todd和Kacy的质询后,她仓惶出逃,才知道眼泪都是假装,看似弱者受害方,早就将自己故事卖了好价钱,她是演艺圈和网红圈 精致利己的多数女性形象,为了流量而经营标签,日子久了 自己也分不清是非真假;
女友Kacy: 她的职业病一直让她扮演人生导师,时不时冒出鸡汤句,但从受牵连结果来看,这些鸡汤确实也是都市浮躁的速效药,锻炼冥想 划清界限 不要圣母,你就是人间清醒;
女友Naff: 单纯机灵小聪明,她很适合去做网红经纪人或直播运营,她的视野格局和不够努力的性格,做导演还是差很多;
富婆Norah: 应该是白手起家的暴发户,貌似热情好客,帮助有理想的年轻人找到资源;实则是填补自己被需求被认同的欲望,被自身的空虚反噬;
Todd妻:嫁给凤凰男的真白富美,对伴侣有极大的涵养和包容,忍受伴侣的阶层嘲讽,别的女人费尽心机去要的地位,她与生俱来,然而爱心捂不热凤凰男的执着,门当户对确实必要。
说在前面:我逛了一下IMDB,看到一篇影评,又刷新了我对于剧里剧外Anna的认知,特此搬运翻译一下这篇影评,如有侵权,请及时告知。
以下是正文(标题如上):
Netflix支付给Anna Sorokin,本剧的核心诈骗犯32万美元用于购买其故事的版权。Sorokin用这笔钱偿还了她从银行盗窃的资金,以及她欠纽约州的一些罚款。接着,她参加了大大小小的脱口秀或是其他综艺以继续出名。
在我撰写这篇影评的时候,她正在等待被遣返回德国,但罹患新冠阻碍了这一进程。美国海关认为她是故意患病以呆在美国更久,毕竟,Anna本就是个骗子。
因此,为了让我们这些普罗大众明白反社会人格和好莱坞的运作模式,(被诈骗的)银行又重新通过Anna的故事版权获得了补偿,然而,在Anna诈骗过程中用的那些普通人的伟德体育最新网站卡和银行账户仍然没有得到补偿。尽管纽约州有山姆之子法律条文(译者注:禁止以盈利为目的出版罪犯的犯罪回忆录)的存在,通过Shonda Rimes撰写的这个剧本,Anna仍然变成了一个“非主流主角”并通过她的罪行获利。当我们看这部剧的时候,我们正在帮助一个反社会者牟利。
诈骗是骗子的本质。
Julia Garner对Anna的诠释很棒,但她的口音让我想砸了我的电视。Shonda呈现给了我们一个迷人的剧本。但这部剧的意义究竟是什么,只是为了拍某种OJ(译者注:OJ Simpson案是美国历史上最轰动的案子,有相关纪录片及改编美剧)“如果我做了”视角的犯罪吗?
我不喜欢拔高骗子地位的想法,尤其是我不喜欢因为她只诈骗富人所以她的诈骗行为没有问题的想法。诈骗就是诈骗。
她不是罗宾汉。她只是个小偷。
get your VIP !!! 有一点挺有意思,就是那个摄影师说安娜的品位是完美的,但是那个有钱老太太说她的品位很差!看完了其实有点难过,如果安娜这么拼这么能想办法都成功不了,那美国梦其实就是假的呗。当然可能有人会说慢慢挣钱啊,干嘛非要一下子就申请两千万美元贷款,就不能白手起家一点一点赚吗?酒店那个女的就是自己攒钱拍电影,她说她开始拍了,又说要辞职,可是哪有那么容易呢?另外安娜真的很会PUA其他人,先是给甜头,然后时不时说一些刻薄伤人的话,再扮可怜脆弱,再凶狠……反正和她在一块就是过山车一样的刺激,她的朋友、律师,还有记者都有点被她PUA,里面也会讨论是不是被安娜owned ,黑客军团里也会讨论这个。这种拥有不只是被钱收买,而是灵魂精神层面被降服了,心里放不下安娜,受不了看她受苦……
1、前面消费靠刷男人投资款 后面消费要诈骗偷窃 票子获取成本低 独乐乐不如众乐乐2、护照那出和瑞秋撕逼那出 处理得挺瞎的 随便吼几句 我信了 一是男友也是半斤八两是不做实事忽悠投资款主要是用于自我包装的虚荣鬼;二瑞秋是贪慕虚荣的beta婊 骗子有观众就有空间3、普通老百姓螺丝钉迷醉于她"她有我无“的勇敢无畏 扭曲力场4、真实人物长相普通 父亲卡车司机 俄罗斯人融入德国被孤立 用时尚垒起城堡 魔法打败魔法到纽约 给自己输入一段心智 德国信托6000w继承人 先洗到自己都相信 怀揣艺术基金会梦想5、金融核心看的验证的就是6000w信托的真实性 前面随你怎么表演 没有6000w那就直接拆舞台时尚圈名利场本来就很多空心萝卜 别说名流也被骗啊 是本来很多也是虚荣空心管 6、有钱被撸基本不伸张 因为谁也不想承认自己是傻逼 当浇花
记者戏太多!
同样是伟德体育最新网站卡被盗刷,Tinder诈骗王里的受害者至今还在还几十万美金的卡债,而本片中纽约富婆跟银行CEO好姐妹打个招呼,将被Anna盗刷的40万刀给拿回来了…果然普通人和上层人哪怕同样被诈骗,结果也是大大不同的。
完全不想了解这个女记者的故事,水时长不是你这么水的,冲着看骗子嗯题材来的,你给我挂羊头卖狗肉节奏是真的拉夸,这么好的题材随便第一人称讲怎么骗术的都ok,竟然能拍成这样也是没想到的这个编剧是觉得人类都是傻的吗,都说了社交名媛作假,这个记者却不知道从网络媒体找,苦恼怎么联系人?第一次见面安娜提醒了媒体采访快八十遍,她愣是不懂安娜想要什么,非要绕一大圈幡然醒悟原来要媒体采访,把观众当傻子吗?
如果拍成电影更合适,长了就臭了
连看tinder男骗子和纽约女骗子的感想:二位的失败很大程度上归罪于奢侈品买的都是正品吧🌹
这个题材拍成爽剧就差不多了,想要深度还是不太成功。本身女主就是骗子,用第一视角拍她如何实施各种骗术会更有看点,第三视觉展示了太多不必要和令人催眠的戏份,也拖慢了节奏。另外不清楚真实事件的主人公性格如何,但剧中女主的人设有些割裂,一方面她既然能把这么多上层人士骗得团团转,按理来说应该非常聪明,并且心理素质超强,剧里却总表现她无能狂怒的样子,实在让人觉得说服力不大。
Ep1节奏缓慢,但是回看以后还是觉得开了个好头,剧里不厌其烦地对比了普通探监和媒体探监的不同,就是为了烘托Anna自始至终最想要的:权力和名声,金钱只能算第三位,VIP从来不需要等待。Ep3开始越来越好看,每集通过不同的当事人了解Anna的一个侧面。看过采访后能发现Anna和硅谷滴血成金的ceo本质是同一类人,自认天之骄子并有超强的信念认为自己在成就“伟大”的事业,她们都不觉得自己在骗人,因为所有的谎言都只不过是还未兑现的诺言。茱莉亚加纳越看越美!
骗人骗到这种程度可以算有精神疾病了。这种psycho能骗到那么多人必定有个人魅力或者让别人想信服于她的点,但网飞只拍出了个烦人精在骗一堆弱智
最后一集,女记者的价值观是啥啊????还为她惋惜呢,救命,有任何人知道安娜就是个女骗子吗??
安娜的演技看起来和美国郑爽一样,一直期待有反转,结果就是一个fraud,nothing happened totally a bullshit🥲
我们的安娜是心理强大无比的表演系和心理系优秀毕业生——安娜一直标榜有个富爸爸,笑谈钱不是问题,然而她一路上就没付过钱,都是蛊惑利用别人(高级杀猪盘?);安娜也戳中了有钱人的G点,她故意用挑剔的刻薄的自大的语气和态度去与有钱人交流,谁想到有钱人没见过敢这么对自己的,还觉得安娜这妹子特立独行与众不同,反而很吃这套,笑死。
女记者的烂演技已经是我看本片的最大障碍,第三集开始都拖过她的戏份,又油腻又浮夸又无聊!麻烦回到第一人称叙事好吗???
第一集女记者老公跟她说:you always have a choice。 建议她可以休个产假养个娃再换工作。在产检时连声fuck,告诉老公你要是觉得生个孩子能弥补我职业生涯终结的痛苦我一定会晚上一枕头闷死你。纽约,上海,全世界,都一样。 看到最后:网飞和amex是战略合作吗哈哈哈
太失望了, anna delvey的故事本来这么有意思的, ep 1 都在讲那个女记者的故事 like who gives a fxxk. 完全可以拍documentary,拍成超无聊的肥皂剧(bridgeton的编剧)某些无脑观众说anna是modern day robin hood 还girl boss。Netflix给anna Sorokin 巨款,帮她还清债务,还有结余。拍成这样是想推广怎样的narrative
说实话女主演技不行,基本上还是 Ozark 里乡下大姐头的套路,连俄语口音都学不好
我没看出女主deserve it的气质,不知道是剧本还是表演的原因,呈现出来的只是一个虚荣低级的诈骗犯,导致后面记者和律师对她的情感没有说服力
这个剧真的看得我压力很大,女主和她周围的人脑子都很有病,女主是narcissistic psychopath,周围的人斯德哥尔摩综合症。本剧我最喜欢的几个人物:Vivian的老公,Nef的男朋友,Todd的老婆,Rachel的男朋友。
难得一遇的低开高走的一部剧。第一集铺垫有点冗长,女记者戏份过多差点弃剧,但坚持到三集以后简直打开了新世界。编剧借女记者调查事件为由,从不同相关人士口中渐渐把“安娜”这个人物给观众拼凑出来:她漂亮聪明,挥金如土,口才了得,品味高雅;心理素质极佳,gaslighting功力深厚,装疯卖傻手到擒来,深谙丛林法则,惯会利益交换……再结合原型的故事,感叹世界的物种多样性如此丰富。如果把女主当作人性放大镜,在money naver sleeps的花花世界,谁比谁高贵,谁能全身而退,又有谁苦苦沉沦呢?