“I don’t care what the role is,” says Shondaland alum Katie Lowes, perhaps best known for her role on Scandal as Quinn Perkins. “I don’t care if it’s big or small, if it comes in late, early, whatever, I’m game. I just want to be in the Shondaland universe.”
Well, consider that goal achieved. After her Scandal days, Lowes has gone on to cement herself in the Shondaland universe with, first, her hit Shondaland Audio podcast, Katie’s Crib, on which Lowes sits down with experts and celebrity mothers alike to talk about the sometimes messy side of motherhood. Now, Lowes is rejoining Shondaland TV as part of the ensemble cast in Shonda Rhimes’ latest Netflix series, Inventing Anna, playing best friend and con target Rachel DeLoache Williams to Julia Garner’s Anna Delvey, who memorably swindled New York high society in her quest to become the city’s next big power player.
Lowes remembers hearing about Shondaland optioning the rights to the hard-to-believe-it’s-true true story of con woman Delvey, who posed as a wealthy German heiress but was really born Anna Sorokin in her home country of Russia. Being a native New Yorker, Lowes had heard rumblings of the tale, but when it was announced that Delvey’s rise and fall was going to become a Netflix series courtesy of Shondaland, Lowes immediately looked up more details and realized that there were parts for women in their late 20s and 30s. And then she saw a picture of Williams, who famously penned an essay for Vanity Fair that exposed how Delvey organized a lavish trip to Morocco for herself, Williams, and their friends — and then left Williams with a $62,000 hotel bill to pay for all on her own.
“I was like, ‘Huh. Interesting,’” says Lowes of the series. “But I didn’t discuss it with Shonda. I just didn’t think there was any way that lightning strikes again. I count my blessings. She saved and changed my life forever. I am so grateful. But, like, call me if you want me to play waitress No. 3.”
Months later, in 2019, however, Rhimes did call Lowes to tell her that, yes, there was going to be a part for her in Rhimes’ new show.
“I was so excited,” gushes Lowes, “and then so terrified. Because when Shonda comes knocking, all you want to do is a good job. And when she comes knocking more than once, you’re like, ‘I hope the acting gods look favorably upon me!’”
Despite the nerves, Lowes felt a connection to Williams immediately. Not only from the Vanity Fair essay, but from Inventing Anna producer Jessica Pressler’s New York magazine article that first broke the story on Anna Delvey — and that serves as the inspiration for the series, which is a fictionalized retelling of events — and from a deep dive into Williams’ Instagram feed.
“I felt an immediate empathic connection to her and felt like I could do a good job understanding where she comes from and what she went through,” says Lowes. Shondaland caught up with Lowes to break down that connection, and to dive deeper into the surrealness of playing someone so close to a situation that is still unfolding, filming the series’ crazy scenes in Morocco, and teaming up again with so many Shondaland alums, including director Nzingha Stewart.
VALENTINA VALENTINI: There are quite a few other Shondaland alums in Inventing Anna. What was it like to reconnect with them?
KATIE LOWES: What I think is so cool about being able to have been on multiple Shonda shows is that there’s a vibe and an enthusiasm that comes with it. There definitely was on Scandal. It was amazing to walk into the first table read for Inventing Anna, and there’s Jeff Perry and Kate Burton, Anna Deavere Smith, me; Tom Verica has directed a lot of Shonda’s shows; and even a lot of the same behind-the-scenes people who were involved on Scandal. We started the table read, and we were hooting and hollering and banging on the table. It was electric. And I could see that the other people were used to table reads that are quiet and serious, but we come to play and have fun. I mean, when Jeff Perry is at the table read, you are getting a $350 Broadway performance.
VV: And what were your thoughts about the script?
KL: The basic thing that makes the Shonda sauce — and it doesn’t matter the medium: miniseries, series, cable, streaming, whatever — it’s this: You can’t read the scripts fast enough, can’t flip the pages fast enough. There’s this sort of need for more information, and you can’t get enough. I don’t know how Shonda taps into that, but she does. And then there are complicated, human, strong women everywhere you look. There is steamy intimacy and interesting relationships. And there is that I-don’t-know-who-to-root-for gray area that Shonda is so good at playing in. Someone’s on the right side, and the next week someone’s on the wrong side. Am I supposed to hate this person, or am I supposed to love this person? It makes it so addictive.
VV: If you were able to, did you reach out to Williams?
KL: I did not reach out to her. There are some actors from the show who worked closely with some of the real-life people they were playing. I just felt from the beginning that I wanted the real-life her to be a jumping-off point, but, like, I’m not playing Jackie O; I don’t have to embody a person that we all know as a cultural icon. I was going to get my information from the story that Shonda was telling. I’ve never played a real-life person, so I accessed what I could online. I did not read her book. I looked at her interviews, did a few deep dives on her Instagram page, which we all know isn’t a perfect representation of ourselves anyway. What I found the most helpful was going to Morocco. The minute I was there in the place where she got conned, in scenes with Moroccan hotel staff and police officers and cabs driving through the streets of Marrakech, it all influenced it so easily. I felt it from every corner; I even met a staff member who was there when Rachel and Anna were there. Things like that hit home for me.
VV: It must be surreal to play someone, an existing person, who is still, in theory, dealing with the matters that you’re portraying on-screen.
KL: Yeah, it was. I think that was also why I didn’t want to meet her. This is a trauma that happened to someone in real life. And Rachel is a part of the Anna Delvey story — she is one small part to this bigger thing that was going on. I did do a lot of imagination work, and I felt like I know a lot of girls that I think might be like Rachel in my life who influenced me a lot. And then, working with [costume designer] Lyn Paolo again — a lot of that character shaped up the minute I started having fittings. And again, she wasn’t copying Rachel DeLoache Williams’ exact look; she was slightly inspired by it, but then we ran with it. Everything started looking really preppy, and where Rachel fits in with Anna, Neff, and Kacy, each person had a part to play. And that really became clear to me in the fittings too.
VV: Wait — let’s go back to Morocco for a second, because that is really the meat of Rachel’s story.
KL: We had the best time there — me, Julia Garner, Laverne Cox, and Chris Lowell. It was magical. And also, we were just such a group of misfits. We shot for three weeks almost every single day, and they were long days. Nzingha Stewart was directing that block of episodes, and that was so great. I felt so safe and connected to her because she directed my last episode of Scandal, when I was like nine and a half months pregnant with my son. And she took that responsibility very seriously and made me feel safe. They were very physical episodes — I was kidnapped in Joe Morton’s basement in a wedding dress about to give birth to Quinn’s baby. Nzingha was so caring and an incredible leader. She’s also married to a Moroccan man, so there we were in Morocco, and my husband [Adam] is there and our two kids, Julia’s husband is there, and Nzingha’s husband with his whole, entire Moroccan family. So, all the girls would be working all day, every day, and our guys would just be out on camels in the desert, roasting meat underneath tents, riding ATVs, having the time of their lives. I did get two days off, though, and we drove to Essaouira on the water. But it was my last international trip before the entire world changed, so when I talk about our life with my family, it was a huge part of our lives. But this is why working with Shondaland is the best place in the world. I had told them that I’d never left my baby for longer than three nights, so they were like, “Bring your baby. And Adam too. We’re putting everybody up.” This is why Netflix and Shonda are amazing.
VV: You’re from NYC, and you began your career there. Have you ever come across people like Anna and her posse?
KL: Well, I’ve never come across a sociopath! I kept leaning into that while playing Rachel, though — like, a lot of people got conned by a sociopath, someone who has no feelings whatsoever. Julia Garner got to go meet [Anna], and I talked to Julia about it endlessly, which only confirmed that Rachel was dealing with a con artist. But I did go to college in the city and spent three years cocktail waitressing at the Maritime Hotel and as a babysitter for really, really, really rich people. So, I’ve seen the world that they travel, which is like a whole crazy thing. I could see how it was such a carrot for Rachel, someone who wanted to work at Vanity Fair her whole life, and she, who loves photography, gets the crappy mailroom-equivalent job there. And I did all of those jobs in New York and worked my ass off and had friends in higher places who would invite me out. I would get those nights out with the bags and the dresses and the clothes and the $25 drinks and bottle service for $2,000 and all this stuff, and it was a totally different world. So, it was very easy for me to tap into Rachel’s curiosity and wanting to feel cool.
VV: I’ve interviewed a lot of the cast of Inventing Anna, and you’re the first person who has used the word “sociopath” to describe Anna Delvey. I think it must be because of the character that you’ve played, because these other characters are, in a sense, more on her side — or at least willing to be sympathetic. I’m curious: Do you, Katie, think Anna is a bad person, a con artist?
KL: I’m terrified of Anna Sorokin. I don’t ever want to meet that person. She scares me. How do you trust her? I get the cool parts about her, the Robin Hood parts of her, like stealing from the Man, taking from the rich, but she’s not giving it to the poor.
VV: Do you think it all would have played out differently if she were a man?
KL: Would she be in jail? I doubt it. People who have done so much worse are running free with severance packages that are billions of dollars. I think you’re right — I call her sociopath because I had to play Rachel. But I just can’t imagine having a friend do that to you.
VV: Speaking of friends, Rachel and Neff’s relationship is an interesting one to watch. What do you think is going on there?
KL: I was playing it as that classic high school mean-girl vibe where you’re jockeying for best-friend position to Anna. Being best friend to Anna means you have more access, and everyone is using each other for their own gain. Rachel doesn’t like the way that Neff [played by Alexis Floyd] is doing it, and Neff doesn’t like the way that Rachel is doing it, but it turns out we’re both sort of doing the same thing, just in our own way.
VV: Now, this is your first show back at Shondaland since Scandal ended, but it’s also Shonda Rhimes’ first show back as showrunner. What was that like for you?
KL: It’s all I know, you know what I mean? Because we did Scandal, and then we took this break, I did a couple other jobs, acted in other things. And then, coming back, it doesn’t feel any different, honestly. It just feels really familial, like coming home. It’s so weird that I get to say that Shonda is a friend of mine, because then when you work with her, you’re like, “Oh, wait, she’s a genius. I’m actually friends with a genius.” It’s not that I forget that when she’s asking me to text her pictures of my children or when we FaceTimed to hang out over the pandemic and catch up, or when she’s baking bread and sending me a photo, whatever it is. But then when she’s in the showrunner seat and we’re all reading something that she’s written, I’m reminded that she is literally one of the greatest TV writers of all time.
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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