“It’s the first role I’ve had where I needed to look like a personal trainer, where I needed to look like I’m in shape and that I exercise,” Laverne Cox says with a chuckle over Zoom about her new role in the Shondaland Netflix series Inventing Anna, premiering February 11. “I also got to have a sex scene, which I haven’t really done before. But Kacy is a very sexy, sexual woman, and so am I. So, tapping into that part of myself for the character was a lot of fun.”
The Kacy whom Cox is referring to is Kacy Duke, a former fitness competitor turned consultant, as well as the personal trainer and life coach for high-end clients and celebrities like Dakota Johnson, Lenny Kravitz, and Julianne Moore. In spring 2017, Duke was also hired — to the tune of $4,500 in cash for a package of sessions — by Anna Delvey, the infamous grifter whose swindling of New York City bankers, hotels, and the city’s elite is the subject of Inventing Anna, written and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, who personally tapped Cox for the fictionalized role of Duke in the series.
In real life, Duke, a consummate optimist, was indeed a part of the Delvey whirlwind for a short time — she made that infamous trip to Morocco, which resulted in the $62,000 worth of hotel charges that Delvey famously charged to friend Rachel DeLoache Williams’ credit cards. But because Delvey and Duke’s relationship began as a business transaction, Cox observes, perhaps Kacy didn’t get quite as personally caught up in the mess.
Even so, beyond just changing her outer appearance for this first-of-a-kind character, Cox — a four-time Primetime Emmy nominee for Orange Is the New Black, Daytime Emmy winner for executive producing 2014’s The T Word, and host of the Shondaland Audio podcast The Laverne Cox Show — was also able to show sides of herself through Duke that she hadn’t been able to before as an actress. She got to free the motivational and inspirational parts of herself, she got to have a love interest and be sexy, and she often felt a lot of joy in making Inventing Anna. Which is ironic considering Inventing Anna depicts a New York City con woman who swindles some of her closest friends and allies, including Duke.
“Kacy told me her whole life story, and it was incredible,” says Cox, who took on the role with body and soul, spending training sessions with the real Kacy Duke, talking with her for hours on end, and being continually grateful that Duke was open and available to lend herself to the fictionalized version of herself. “I never want to repeat. I want to be challenged, and [playing Kacy] was certainly challenging.” And she’s not just talking about on-screen.
“It was really frustrating when we had to take a break because of the pandemic,” Cox continues. “I was in it. Like, deeply in the story and deeply in Kacy. So, to leave her for six months was kind of devastating, and then I just hoped to come back and have the same energy there.” Well, consider us biased, but there’s certainly no lack of energy among Cox and her co-stars Julia Garner (Delvey), Anna Chlumsky (Vivian Kent), Katie Lowes (Williams), and Alexis Floyd (Neff). In fact, the potent female presence in the series is exactly what makes Inventing Anna so fun and dynamic.
Ahead of the series’ premiere, Shondaland caught up with Cox about getting into the head of an elite athlete, how Anna Delvey was punished when others committing the same crimes were not, and what it was like spending time with Duke.
VALENTINA VALENTINI: Did you know anything about Anna Delvey before taking on this role?
LAVERNE COX: I was sent the New York magazine article way back in 2019, when I began to have talks about this project. I read it and was like, “Whoa, what is this?” I had just seen something about it when Anna was in court and remembered it vaguely but hadn’t really followed the story. But then I became kind of obsessed with it and read as much as I could about it.
VV: What were your first thoughts about this project, about helping to tell Anna’s story?
LC: I was deeply intrigued by Kacy, and by this Anna woman. It was particularly interesting to read about Anna falsifying financial documents to obtain a loan and to think that, at about the same time, Michael Cohen was testifying that former President Trump inflated his assets to obtain loans and then deflated them for tax purposes. So, there are all these allegations about him falsifying financial documents, and here’s this woman who is an immigrant, who comes here and wants to make something of herself and does what a lot of successful men or successful Americans from privilege do, and who are never really held accountable. That’s an interesting story about America, about the American dream, about the corruption that is inherent in the American dream, and how this “by any means necessary” mentality that she had is not unlike the Wall Street folks who crashed the economy in 2008. None of them went to jail, yet Anna went to jail. I find that to be a very American story [laughs].
VV: Why was it important for you to meet and connect with Kacy Duke?
LC: Shonda and I kind of speculated about some of her motivations, and she talks about them in that interview, but I needed to meet her to get and feel her. In most of her public-facing things, like on YouTube, she’s motivational, she’s inspirational, she’s a little coquettish and sexy. And I wanted to kind of get underneath all of that to see if there was some darkness. What is the struggle? What is the human being behind this person who has been a celebrity trainer for 30 years for people like Denzel Washington and Julianne Moore? I wanted to get to the heart of who she is as much as I could.
VV: What was it like spending time with Kacy?
LC: Kacy was so incredibly generous with me. She shared very intimate things about her life and her relationships and career that were really useful for me. None of that backstory is in the show, but it helped me to internalize and embody those experiences and how they would affect who Kacy the character would have become. It’s a lot of pressure too because I’ve met her; I’ve spent time with her. I adore her. She’s an incredible human being and has lived an amazing life. I want to do that justice, so there’s a bit of pressure that I always felt on this show. I tried to let it go, but I never fully could.
VV: It must be surreal, difficult even, to portray a person on-screen who possibly might still be experiencing the fallout from the story you’re telling on TV.
LC: I think with Kacy it’s different than other people in Anna’s life. I don’t think she’s experiencing the fallout from it. Kacy, for the most part throughout all of this, had really good boundaries. For Kacy, this was a job. It was not unusual for Kacy to travel with clients and train them. This was a gig for her, and she takes her work very seriously. She really wants to bring the best out of people, and that was deeply sincere for her. I really felt that. In one of the interviews, she’d even said, “I still think I could’ve helped her [Anna].” So, I don’t think it was as traumatizing for Kacy. She wasn’t grifting, she wasn’t using anyone, she didn’t do anything wrong, so it’s totally different than the other characters.
VV: Fair enough. But what about that pressure you talked about before? How did that pressure of portraying a real-life person on-screen play out for you?
LC: I think about Kacy watching and going, “Oh, god, this is not me! What is she doing? I don’t look like that or sound like that.” Just completely trashing me and hating it and then being mad at me. That’s the story that goes on in my head [laughs]. Most people don’t walk around with their heart and their motivation on their sleeves, but Kacy does. But there’s almost always something going on underneath. And while Kacy was emotionally available for me, it’s also my job to get in there and psychologically analyze and get a sense of what’s underneath the surface. That’s what makes the character really interesting.
I was watching this interview with Adam McKay, and he was talking about Christian Bale’s portrayal of Dick Cheney. And he was like, “I think he was more Dick Cheney than Dick Cheney.” I think that Christian Bale’s performance tapped into all the motivations, the wants, the needs, the hopes, the dreams that Dick Cheney might not even be fully in touch with. That is our job as actors. Now, I don’t know if Christian hoped that Dick Cheney liked the performance, but I have a deep love and respect for Kacy and her life and what she’s been through, so I want her to be happy. But also I have to go where I need to go in terms of the story. It’s not even her biography; she’s a supporting character. It’s a dramatization, and I have an obligation to tell the story that Shonda has put on the page. It’s a balancing act.
VV: It’s got to be exhausting being that positive all the time.
LC: I have to say, there was a part of me that was skeptical of Kacy’s positivity. She is this really upbeat, positive person, like, all the time. I was like, “What’s up? No one’s like that all the time.” Kacy trained me three or four times in addition to that first lunch, and she is this upbeat and positive person. Now, she used to compete in fitness competitions. She is an athlete. She’s 65 years old, and she’s been an athlete her whole life, and athletes have a specific way of thinking. This may sound crazy, but I met with a sports psychologist so I could understand that elite athlete mentality. Because it’s very different. It’s a mentality that they have where it’s like, I can win, there’s a plan, I’m setting little goals. And that crystallized where Kacy was coming from for me. Because she was a puzzle that I wanted to solve as an actor, and usually I try to start with a character flaw. But with Kacy, she’s so upbeat and so positive even though she’s been through so much. I think her positive perspective is because she’s an athlete. Speaking to a sports psychologist to understand this mentality helped me to drop in more. I had a little judgment about it, and that’s really bad to judge your characters.
VV: Back up for a second — did you say Kacy Duke is 65?
LC: Yeah. Well, she turned 65 in 2020.
VV: Gosh, she looks so much younger!
LC: Well, that’s partly why Shonda asked me to play her because there are not a lot of 65-year-old women who look like Kacy.
VV: We know Anna is guilty because there was a trial that said so, but do you think she is a bad person or a monster? And what do you think Kacy the character thinks?
LC: Believe it or not, I do not think that Anna is a monster. And I try to not make judgments about anyone like that. Was she guilty? Absolutely. Should she have gone to jail? Absolutely. Do I think Kacy would agree? I don’t know. For Kacy, it was all so unfortunate. There was a betrayal from Anna, but the biggest betrayal for Kacy was from Rachel. It was clear that something was off with Anna from the beginning. Kacy then allied herself with Rachel but had really strong feelings when she found out about Rachel wearing a wire, helping to turn Anna in. … She felt used. My interpretation is that with Anna it was a little more transactional because she was a client. She was training Rachel as well, but when the s--t hit the fan, Kacy had befriended Rachel, so it felt more like a betrayal because there was so much information that Rachel had withheld. As for Anna — she might have some sociopathic tendencies. Her behavior suggests that something’s a little off psychologically. There’s definitely a lack of empathy, which suggests narcissism or some kind of sociopathic tendencies. Which is all so fascinating.
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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