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What is it about Anna Delvey that fascinates so many people? Including your humble crew at United States of Scandal? Why has she captured so many column inches in newspapers and pages in magazines, filled so many hours of footage in podcasts, Netflix dramatizations, and news broadcasts? From her false identity as a German heiress to financial deception, grand larceny, serving time at Rikers, competing on Dancing with the Stars, and now pursuing a career in fashion, Anna’s journey has been nothing short of fascinating.
Having met and interviewed her in 2022, I still can’t quite figure her out or provide a simple answer as to why so many found her story so captivating. That 2022 interview made it clear how she embodies both an aspirational glamour and deception, acting as a mirror that reflects some ugly truths about American society. Flash forward to this new interview: Anna and I are drinking coffee, sitting across from one another. She sits poised, composed, and carefully calculated. But as the interview wears on, I realize that beneath that facade was a woman entirely focused on crafting her second act.
Her carefully chosen words reveal an intense focus on her future, without, it seems to me, confronting the full weight of her actions. Instead of publicly acknowledging the damage she caused, Delvey frames her criminal past as a mere setback, as if it were part of her personal narrative to overcome. She still doesn’t see herself as someone who intentionally did wrong, but rather as a young and naïve social climber who had all intention of paying everyone back whom she stole from.
Is it an act?
Regardless of what you may think of her, the key point is that so many of you do think of her. Whether on instagram or Netflix, podcasts or CNN, she is in the limelight. Is she a reflection of the quintessentially American system that allows us all to write our own narratives? Perhaps the real question is not who Anna Delvey is, but what her story reveals about us.
