(SPOILER ALERT)
This week’s recommendation brings you not one, but two TV shows, both available on Netflix. Inventing Anna and Tinder Swindler are both very similar in terms of the topics they cover. Both aforementioned shows are based on true events that happened in recent years.
Inventing Anna
Tv Show
Genre: Drama
Rating: 6.9 IMDB
Streaming on: Netflix
This drama miniseries is about a 20-something year-old girl who convinced New York’s rich and famous she was a German heiress about to inherit 60 million US dollars. As con-artists usually do, she created a character named Anna Delvey, who slowly but successfully climbed the social ladder, making her breakthrough first in Paris, and later New York. She made acquaintances with many A-listers, hitting nightclubs, and afterparties, and staying in far-too-expensive hotels. One could say, she was living large. No one suspected anything. Anna Delvey began swindling huge amounts of money, borrowing it from her rich friends who could / and were willing to cover her expenses. She even tried to defraud banks, pursuing million dollar loans for her future ADF project (Anna Delvey Foundation) – a contemporary art hub she envisioned creating.
Netflix’s Inventing Anna is a 9 episode drama, starring Julia Garner as Anna Delvey, or Anna Sorokin, as is her real name. Garner did an amazing job depicting Delvey (Sorokin), and even adopted her true English accent, which is an unusual mix of Russian-German-British and English flavored, with American NY English.
Tinder Swindler
Movie
Genre: Documentary, Crime
Rating: 7.2 IMDB
Streaming on: Netflix
Is a Netflix documentary movie, based on a true story. A man named Simon Leviev wooved women on Tinder posing as a young rich businessman, and jet-setting diamond mogul. He would trick women into dating him, and then bombarded them with love, affection, and expensive trips and gifts, all so he could gain their trust, and make them fall in love with him. Once they were hooked, he would then fake a serious attack on him and his entourage, providing the women the footage to cover and back his story. The women (and yes, there were multiple women at the same time), were terrified for Simon. He knew how to play the empathy card on them, asking them for loans because his assets were allegedly unavailable. Generally, they bought the story, and covered his expenses without question.
All the characters are played by themselves, and since it is a documentary, all the stories are backed with huge amounts of evidence.
Whether you decide to watch the miniseries, produced by Shonda Rhimes, or the documentary, you can compare and contrast these two truly unbelievable stories, and ask yourself a question – could I be seduced the same way and trust these kinds of people. One of the possible answers is – you never know. So be careful about who you let into your inner circle.
