With Inventing Anna out on Netflix, Pressler, who is also a producer on the series, spoke with us about the adaptation process, why she was surprised Shonda Rhimes and her team decided to make a reporter a central character, and how the show ended up capturing the truth of her experience. Anna Chlumsky, who plays Vivian, didn’t base her performance on Pressler in specific, but there are similarities in their histories and in some of the details of her reporting process.
On the show, the journalist’s name is Vivian, and the magazine goes by Manhattan, though its offices bear a close resemblance to our own.
It’s all very close to the truth of the article on which the show is based, reported here in New York Magazine by Jessica Pressler, of the real-life Anna Sorokin, who got many wealthy New Yorkers to foot the bill for her lavish lifestyle.
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In the Netflix series Inventing Anna, a journalist tries to untangle a web of lies spun by a socialite who claims to be a German heiress. Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photos by Netflix and Getty Images Anna Chlumsky as Vivian Jessica Pressler.