In case you just stumbled upon this page and have no idea who Shonda Rhimes is, let’s quickly recap: She’s the creator of ABC hits Grey’s Anatomy (the longest-running drama on prime time, going into its 19th season) and Scandal, and an executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder; she’s also an executive producer of Netflix’s Bridgerton, the first season of which was one of the streamer’s most streamed series of all time and whose second season premieres on March 25; and she also, lest we forget, wrote the Britney Spears-starring coming-of-age film Crossroads.
Whatever project Rhimes is bringing to the big or small screen, the women at the center of those projects are part of a through line of sorts: They go after what they want, and they aren’t afraid to need what they need. Careers, power, love, money, sex — from Meredith Grey to Olivia Pope to Annalise Keating, these are women who are determined to drive their own path no matter how complicated, bumpy, or messy things (or they) might get along the way.
So, it’s perhaps no surprise that Rhimes’ latest creation for Netflix is Inventing Anna, a thrilling nine-episode limited series that follows Anna Delvey — played by Emmy-winner Julia Garner — a Russian immigrant who pretends to be a German-born heiress and manages to scam some of New York’s high society out of millions of dollars.
The story is introduced to viewers through the eyes of journalist Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), whose real-life counterpart, Jessica Pressler (also a co-producer on the show), penned the New York magazine exposé that introduced the world to the real-life Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey.
In the show, Vivian’s seemingly unending quest at getting Anna’s story is motivated by wanting to redeem a major career mishap, while Anna’s seemingly unending quest for fame is further buoyed by Vivian’s interest in Anna and who she really is.
“We were exploring what it meant to feel failure and the need to feel redeemed or seen for both of those characters — Vivian and Anna,” says Rhimes when asked about how this show stacks up against the canon of her leading women. “Anna really needed to be seen. She wanted to become something, was determined to be somebody, to be whatever famous was or meant, to be a big deal, even though she didn’t necessarily have all the goods. And Vivian was really determined to redeem her career, to turn herself into something, to be seen for what she should be or what she believes she should be valued for.”
We sat down with the prolific television writer and producer to talk about showrunning Inventing Anna, working with so many Shondaland alumni, why she never wanted to meet the real Anna Sorokin, and some juicy insights into Bridgerton’s second season.
VALENTINA VALENTINI: Tell us about how you first came across this story and what happened next.
SHONDA RHIMES: I was at a spa on a treadmill when I read the article. And I was riveted. I saw it immediately. There was something so beautiful about Jessica’s writing that really painted a picture of a world that I had never really thought that much about — these different wealth pockets of New York. And I found the world of a concierge interesting and the world of scam artists interesting; why we believe the scam artist, what it is that makes us dive right in. I was fascinated by that. The essence of a scam artist, really, is that they reflect you back to you.
VV: So, did Anna Delvey reflect something back in you?
SR: No, that’s not what I mean. I never met Anna. What I’m saying is that I learned why a scam artist can take somebody in — they can reflect whatever a person needs to see in the mirror for themselves.
VV: Ah, of course. And Anna was a master at that.
SR: It’s very much the reason why I did not meet Anna. I have yet to meet somebody who didn’t like Anna when they met her. They get drawn in, and every single person comes away with a very different take on who Anna was. And that was fascinating to me. So, I chose to get to know Anna through the journalistic eyes of Jessica instead. I thought that if I went to that prison and I got to know Anna, I too was going to be fielding calls from her in the middle of the night; I too am going to have an opinion. And if I have an opinion, I’m not going to be able to write this. If I feel sorry for her, that’s going to slant this one way. If I decide this is a reprehensible human being, that’s going to slant it another way. I wasn’t going to be able to write her as three-dimensionally as I needed to. So, I didn’t want to get involved.
VV: That makes a lot of sense. Now, back to reading Pressler’s article. What happened after you read it?
SR: I called my producing partner, Betsy Beers, and head of content at Shondaland, Alison Eakle. I was like, “This is a really great article. We have to really get into this.” And once we started talking to Jessica, I found out how much she was still in contact with Anna, how she was following along, still involved, still talking to Neff and all of these people. I realized how invested she was and how she had become sort of interwoven into Anna’s life, and that was really intriguing. Like, what was it about Anna that made it so that this journalist — who I’d say had and has a very journalistic view of Anna — would still be so engaged?
VV: Jessica told me that making her article into a show happened quickly — that she was fielding calls from potential producers immediately.
SR: It was an instantaneous situation. It really was. The article came out, the trial had already started, and our writers’ room was up and running to get something off the ground.
VV: But what do you think it was that made Jessica pick Shondaland? Pick you?
SR: I don’t know! I’m a writer, so I had a lot of respect for her as a writer. I really wanted her to be part of the process. There are people who want to buy someone’s article, and then they don’t want to talk to the person at all. I could tell immediately that Jessica was going to be an invaluable resource. I also didn’t fill her with a bunch of hype about who was going to play this character or that, or how big it was going to be. I’m a writer — I wanted to talk about the story and how we were going to tell it, and how I was going to lay it out, and what I hoped it would be. I told her what I hoped her contribution would be. I was just trying to engage with her because, once I read the article, like, I was already a huge fan of her work. So, I just wanted to get to know her and hear what she had to say about everything.
VV: Many of your other shows’ writers’ rooms can be quite large, like a dozen or so people, but Inventing Anna’s was smaller, more intimate. Why was that?
SR: The bigger writers’ rooms, like for Grey’s or Scandal, they’re huge because of the number of episodes that we are churning out. For Netflix, we were making nine episodes — you don’t need that many writers for that. If you’re making 22 episodes of something, you need a lot of bodies in the writers’ room; you need a lot of people on set too. For Inventing Anna, we weren’t writing and shooting at the same time, so it was just the writers’ room. Also, I wanted everybody to be able to take ownership of episodes, like tiny movies and write them that way. We split them up that way and talked about them as if they were little movies, and I let writers take them that way. It was also small because it was a brain trust of people, most of whom I knew and worked with before. And if I hadn’t worked with them before, somebody else in Shondaland had. Like Abby Ajayi had been on How to Get Away With Murder.
VV: Though you’ve been a part of all your shows’ writers’ rooms, Inventing Anna truly is the first time you’re a new show’s creator since Scandal. I think we’re all marking that as something significant from the outside looking in, but does it feel that way to you?
SR: Not really. I know everybody’s like, “Oh, my God, it’s the first show she’s created since Scandal!” But you have to remember that Scandal didn’t end that long ago; it hasn’t been that long since I’ve been in the writers’ room. I was with Scandal right up until its last episode, and when it ended, we started at Netflix. In that same year, we started working on Inventing Anna. We wrote it. We started shooting it. We had a pandemic. We paused. We got back together. We did post-production on it. The whole thing took about four years from the writers’ room to getting it on-screen. So, for me it doesn’t feel like that big of a gap. Also, because of the amount of blood, sweat, and tears I put in on Bridgerton, it doesn’t feel that way either.
VV: What was it like to talk to the real people involved with Anna Delvey? I know they came into the writers’ room for taped interviews.
SR: Well, they Zoomed in for interviews; only Jessica came in. But we had a great interview with Neff, who delighted us all by being exactly who she was — somebody who knows herself, who stands in who she is and knows who she is and is not compromising on that. I love that about her. Kacy too is always very sure of who she is and where she is. Like, she already moved past all of this and found a place of forgiveness for Anna. Todd was highly entertaining in what he shared with us — what he could as an attorney — how he shared it, his approach to dealing with Anna. We had one taped interview that I had Jessica do with Anna in Rikers. We’d sent a whole bunch of questions, and we watched that. The part that was most interesting to us was the cadence of her speech, her mannerisms, getting to understand her that way. A lot of the things that Anna says in that very first scene when you meet her in prison are things that she said in that video.
VV: When I interviewed Anna Chlumsky, she said that when she would ask you a question, you always had a really thoughtful response even if she felt it was a trivial question. Is that something that you’ve always done, or is it something you’ve learned over time?
SR: I mean, I have a lot of respect for actors. In the beginning, I would say, “Just say what’s on the page.” I still believe that. But what I learned about just saying what’s on the page that I think is incredibly important is that in order for an actor to say what’s on the page, they have to understand why they are saying it and know that it feels true to their character. If you can’t explain to them why they’re saying it or why it should feel true to their character, then you should not have written it.
I always say that a character is like a balloon — I’ve made a balloon that hasn’t been blown up yet, and the actor blows the balloon up and makes it float. You’re creating a character with an actor, and that’s an important thing to respect. So, I always try to give them whatever they need to make that work. Some actors don’t want to ask you any questions at all. They just want to run with it. And I find that absolutely thrilling because I have no idea what we’re going to get back. And some actors ask a thousand questions. Jeff Perry, sometimes he wants to ask just one question, like “Was he good at his job?” and somehow that fills up the entire character for him.
VV: Though all your leading women up to this point have been determined, smart high achievers and also, at times, ruthless, Anna Delvey presents a truly different level of that. Was there something in you that said, “Yes, I’d like to tell a story about someone even more complicated”? Does that ring true for you at all?
SR: It doesn’t, mainly because we’re talking about a real person. You’re building a portrait of a real person, which is just very different than when I’m telling a story. I guess, though, this is how I cheated a little bit: Usually, when I’m telling a story, I’m exploring how a job works. That’s what Grey’s is, that’s what Scandal is, that’s even what Bridgerton is. Mostly, those shows are about deconstructing what it is to be a doctor or a fixer or a woman in high-society England. My way of cheating that was that I deconstructed what it was to be a journalist and dealt in through that direction. I don’t look at those women as being ruthless or overachievers. I look at people as being very good at their jobs.
VV: I would personally say that pretty much everything about this story is shocking, but was there one thing that totally shocked you about Anna?
SR: There were two things.
VV: Even better.
SR: One was the dead, stuffed peacock. For some reason, I just couldn’t get over it. Jessica and I talked about it a lot. Like, the fact that that actually happened — that Anna sent somebody a dead, stuffed peacock that they had once admired offhand. That is so random and so strange. The second thing, which I actually found really heartbreaking and shocking and weird, was the trip to Germany, where we thought all the answers would lie. There were no answers whatsoever. It was just sad. Story wise, not reality wise, but that idea that the mother says, “You think you’re going to raise your child, and they’re going to be a certain way, and then they’re not. And you expect it to be because of something you didn’t do, and it’s not.” That was really powerful for me because everybody is looking for Anna’s origin story, and there isn’t one.
VV: I’ve asked all the cast I’ve interviewed the same question, so I’d like to ask you as well: We know that Anna was found guilty, but what are your feelings about her personally? Do you think she’s a bad person?
SR: I don’t think anybody’s just a bad person unless they’re like an actual sociopath. But I don’t think she is. I think she’s a young woman who tried to get over in a world in which we celebrate getting over. We celebrate it when people do it and do it right. The Instagram image of your life is the life you’re supposed to be leading. And we celebrate the people who can get it. We make them president, unfortunately. We were in a period of time where we were celebrating that world as hard as we possibly could. The fake-reality version of your life was what we were all supposed to be doing. Fake it till you make it was important and expected. And she took it far. I don’t think she was a bad person. Do I think she committed crimes? She was found guilty of crimes. Yes. She committed crimes. But do I think that makes her a bad person? No. I think that makes her guilty.
VV: We’ve got Bridgerton coming just around the corner. Is there anything you can or want to say about the second season?
SR: I’m excited about the second season! Expectations couldn’t be higher because everybody’s seen season one, and it exploded in a way that I don’t think any of us expected. But what I love is that Julia Quinn has written these books that are just so amazing and so rich and such a three-dimensional world, and season two is sort of the template that I wanted everybody to understand, which is that every season is based on a different book, a different Bridgerton sibling. We get to spend time with Anthony and Kate and their relationship and how the world shifts when you shift focus onto a different couple.
VV: You said that expectations couldn’t be higher — is filling your own shoes the worst shoes to fill?
SR: I don’t worry about that anymore. You have to think about the fact that the very first television show I wrote, which I think is both a blessing and a curse, was Grey’s Anatomy. That was how I learned to write TV, which was both extraordinary and painful. I remember reading a quote from Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, and she said, “One day I woke up, and I thought to myself, what if my greatest work is behind me?” And I understood that feeling. But you have to come to terms with that really simply — that can’t be your whole existence. So, I decided to start looking at things like my legacy. So, now all my bona fides are in order; I have all my little reputational cards in order. Now I can just enjoy myself, and everything becomes an experiment. If I learned how to write television by writing Grey’s Anatomy and I’m still living, every new show I write, I wonder if I can do it like this or do it like that. There were never any rules taught to me, so everything is a chance to learn. So, I no longer worry about reviews. And the beauty of Netflix, truly, is that I don’t worry about ratings. I have that luxury now.
VV: Speaking of experimenting with new things — can you tell us anything about the Queen Charlotte spinoff?
SR: I can tell you that we are both in preproduction and I am still writing. So, there’s not a lot to tell because I literally paused writing it to talk to you, and I never talk about things while I’m writing them. But I am enjoying myself tremendously. Queen Charlotte is like the Beyoncé of Bridgerton, I like to say. Meaning that the world would not revolve in the same way if she were not in it. I love to write about Queen Charlotte, and I love thinking about her and how she came to be as we know her as this character. We’re not writing a historically correct show about the actual life of Queen Charlotte; we’re writing the Queen Charlotte that you know from Bridgerton. And her story is exciting and fun.
Valentina Valentini is a London-based entertainment, travel, and food writer and also a Senior Contributor for Shondaland. Elsewhere she has written for Vanity Fair, Vulture, Variety, Thrillist, Heated, and The Washington Post. Her personal essays can be read in the Los Angeles Times, Longreads, and her tangents and general complaints can be seen on Twitter at @ByValentinaV.
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