Law&Crime Sidebar - Woman Sues Netflix Over Portrayal as Backstabbing Friend in 'Inventing Anna'

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Jesse Weber sits down with Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, the attorney representing the woman suing Netflix over her portrayal in Inventing Anna.GUESTS:Alexander Rufus-Isaacs: www.rufuslaw.com/alexander-rufus-isaacs/LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I do not have time for this. I do not have time for you. Netflix is being sued over its hit show inventing Anna, but you might be surprised to learn what this suit is actually about. I'm joined by Alexander Rufus Isaacs, the attorney representing the woman suing the streaming company.

Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. So let's talk a little inventing Anna. Many of you out there probably have watched the show. It was a must see. There were memes. There was social media chatter. There was water cooler talk.

It was a popular, popular hit for Netflix. And it spawned a lot of people impersonating the main character. What are you wearing? What are you, Paul? Actually, I think that's not the worst impression out there, but I'm sure we'll see it in the comments. Anyway, the story focuses on con woman Anna Sorkin, who falsely presented herself as a German heiress named Anna Delvey and swindled people and institutions out of their money. Now, in real life, Sorokin was convicted by a New York jury on eight charges, including grand larceny. Prosecutors said that Sorkin stole more than $275,000 from major financial institutions, banks, hotels, acquaintances, all in the United States. the States between 2013 and 2017. It's a really, really fascinating story, but one of the real life people portrayed in this show is not too happy right now. Rachel Deloche Williams, a former Vanity Fair photo editor who published a story about her time with Sorokin and actually

turned state's witness against her, has filed a lawsuit against Netflix for defamation and an alternative theory of false light invasion of privacy. The complaint says the defamatory statements falsely portray Williams as an unethical, greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative, opportunistic person. Give me back that money, please. My being like this is so dramatic. Well, we thought who would be best to talk about this lawsuit, and we got them? We have Williams' attorney Alexander Rufus Isaac. Sir, it's great to have you here on Sidebar.

Hi, thank you, Jesse. Thanks for having me on. I think before we get into what you may believe the motivations of Netflix was for doing what they allegedly did. I'd like to start with what about inventing Anna is false and defamatory, if you can summarize that up for us. We've identified 16 specific events where they have falsified either events involving Rachel or statements that they show her character on the series to make, which she never made. And you can roughly divide them up into four or five different categories, one being accusing her of being a sponger and a freeloader, another one being of being a false friend who dropped Sorokin simply because she got in trouble, she abandoning her in Morocco when there were all sorts of problems, and of lying to friends of just generally being a horrible, snobbish, unpleasant person.

So if somebody looks at this to the outside, they don't know anything about the backstory, how would your client prove that these things didn't happen the way that the show has said it? said it has. Well, in a number of different ways. Firstly, she wrote a book which sets out her side of the story in great detail, and there's never been any allegations that anything she said in there is untrue. Then you have her testimony in Sorokin's criminal trial, which was her testimony under oath, and she was cross-examined by Sorokin's defense lawyer, and most of her testimony, at least as far as the factual issue is concerned, is not challenged. So we also believe that Netflix employed a researcher to research extensively, the backstory. So we're fairly convinced that Netflix knew exactly what the real facts were, and they chose to depart from those facts,

and that's what this lawsuit is about. Yeah, I'm going to get into that, because I think it's fascinating when we get into the motivations. But does Williams have friends, coworkers, acquaintances who can say, hey, I was part of those conversations. I watched the Netflix show. That's not how it went down. Well, a lot of these things were things that didn't happen, and it's often, it's problematic, to prove negatives. But yes, I believe that most of the people who are around at the time will back up what Rachel says. And on some of these situations, it's absolutely clear what happened. Anytime we talk about a lawsuit, we have to ask, what was the harm? So what has happened to your client since the release of inventing Anna and her portrayal has been shown to

millions of people? Defamation is all about damage to reputation. And Rachel's reputation has just been devastated. The online abuse that she has received, comments accusing her of every imaginable sin and crime you can imagine. And that's essentially what defamation is about. It, you know, your good name. And in these circumstances, people believe that the person they were seeing on the series called Rachel Williams, both the real Rachel Williams, and they believed that she was acting in the despicable way in which the character behaved. Let me ask you, the actress who portrays I think her name is Katie Lowe's. Has she ever reached out to your client? No, she has not.

So she never reached out to find out a backstory. I want to understand a little bit more about you, nothing like that. No, she said in an interviewer that she deliberately did not reach out to Rachel. Okay, well, let's now figure out exactly why this happened. The allegation, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that your client had optioned this for HBO. And Netflix was not too happy about this. So Netflix, as a way of fighting back against your client, or maybe they felt a little angry about what she did with her relationship with HBO, they decided to deliberately create a character that painted Ms. Williams in a terrible light. So can you walk us through exactly what those motivations of Netflix might have been here?

I really don't want to speculate. What I can tell you is what we contend in the lawsuit, and one of the contentions in the lawsuit is that she was treated less favorably. because she had sold rights to her story to HBO. But what did Netflix? I mean, did Netflix ever approach her first or after they were having conversations with HBO? What was their conversations? What was Netflix's conversations with your client? Netflix did approach Rachel to buy her rights,

and she told them, I'm sorry, I've already optioned my rights to HBO, and that was the last conversation they had. But there was no, so the only connecting tissue is it didn't work with Netflix, It was working with HBO. She sees the portrayal in inventing Anna. She's portrayed very negatively in her opinion. And I believe actually other news articles have caught on it as well and said there's something a little off with the way they're portraying Rachel Williams. But is there any connective tissue?

Is there anything you've identified that you can share with us that says, we know Netflix did this because of the HBO deal? No. In a word. Okay. Well, let me ask you this. in the series, Anna Delvey is portrayed in a way as an anti-hero. I think a lot of people I mentioned on social media have clung to Anadelvie. They, as I said, they impersonate her.

They see her as a sort of anti-feminist hero in a way. You tell me what your client's reaction has been to the praise, again, in a word of Anadelvie. And I think there has been this, you know, negative feeling towards your client. I think in some ways the negative portrait of Rachel is a counterbalance to the overly sympathetic portrait of Anna Sorokin in the series. And I think that was probably a dramatic decision taken by the showrunners. They have, you know, you have this character, Anna Delvey, who in many ways is a despicable human being who was convicted of larceny of sentenced to prison. And, you know, I think Shonda Ryans has gone on record an interview of saying she's more interesting.

And I think they were trying to make Sorokin more sympathetic. And at the same time, they're looking to make one of the other characters less sympathetic. And they're totally entitled to do that. But what they did is they chose to take Rachel. They portrayed her doing all sorts of things and saying things that she didn't do to make her look like a horrible person. person, and then they used her real name. So that's one of our real beasts in the case, is, you know, we have no beep with, you know, them creating such a character. But if you're going to do that, and you're going to paint them in a false light, then use a different name.

Use a fictional name. Don't identify this person as a real person, give them all the same biographical details as the character, so that everybody watching it believes that that's the real person on the screen when it's not. Yeah, I thought that was curious, that they used her name it and I think that that's probably an advantage to your side in this lawsuit. I will tell you there's something that's interesting is that there is a disclaimer at the beginning of the show that says, quote, this story is completely true except for all the parts that are total BS. How do you interpret that? It's meaningless. I don't know how you interpret it. It's of very little use whatsoever. I think one of the distinctions that Netflix makes is they chose to give some characters

their real name, and they chose to give others a fictional name. So it's entirely conceivable that the people who are given fictional names were fictional characters doing fictional things. But at the same time, they're saying a lot of this is true, and here they are, you know, giving all the casting an actress who in many ways resembled Rachel, giving her all the same biographical details where she works, where she lives, where she went to school, and calling her Rachel Williams. So I think people are entitled to conclude from that that they're watching the real person. And that is a massive mistake in office. But Netflix can come back and say, hey, listen, we're entitled to creative expression. You know, we put this disclaimer, however you want to interpret it, where we are allowed

as other productions and as other movies have made stories about real life content, it's Hollywood. We amplify it a little bit. Don't we have a right to do that? You absolutely do, but don't make a villain and call her by someone's real name? Because, you know, there's a big exception to the First Amendment, which is defamation. You can't trash someone's reputation even in a creative work. The legend at the beginning of the series, almost every kind of drama doc has such a legend, is only of limited significance. It doesn't immunize them from liability. They still have to obey the law. They are still forbidden to make false statements of fact against people and trash their reputations. Now, I imagine, we kind of saw this with the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial,

when you file this kind of lawsuit, and it goes to trial, you can tell the story, you can tell the truth about something, and you could show the whole world what really happened. You know, at the end of the day, we'll probably never know what happened behind closed doors between the two of them, but you did get Johnny Depp's version of events, and obviously the jury believe that. My question to you is, is your client prepared to go forward, say they were completely wrong, go through discovery because they're going to try to show either, A, they had a right to embellish certain details, or B, say that your client is not being truthful throughout this. And is your client, are you prepared for that? Well, yes, if we weren't prepared to do that, we wouldn't have

filed the lawsuit. This is the only avenue left to Rachel to essentially vindicate herself and reestablish her reputation as a good, honest, decent goal. Have there been any conversations with Netflix after, I mean, if you can share with us, what the conversations with Netflix have been after she realized the way they were portraying her and she was upset. Yes, in the complaint, we point out that we had some correspondence. She had a previous attorney back in 2019 who expressed to Netflix Rachel's concerns and unhappiness about the way she had heard she was going to be portrayed. I wrote a letter to Netflix just before the series came out regarding one scene which we had obtained, which is now in the complaint saying

this is wrong, you should fix it, and they declined to do so. And then I reached out to them recently to see if we could resolve anything that we were unable to do so. If you can share what was their position? I'm not able to share that. Okay, well, let me ask you this. The damages that you're seeking, I think they're unspecified at this point. What would be the best case scenario? Again, I don't want to speculate. It's very difficult in defamation cases to value a claim. And all I will say is we see this is a very serious assault on Rachel's reputation. There's a long time between, you know, the filing of a lawsuit and actually when something goes to trial, a lot of these cases ultimately settle. Would a settlement have to consist of Netflix saying making a statement that we were wrong or that we did sloppy work or that we did falsely portray her?

Or is that, I mean, because that seems like the most important part of this. I think the way the dynamics work is that in general, when you settle a case, the defendant wants the details to remain confidential. And it's rare for them to issue a public statement along the lines that you're suggesting. Obviously, that would be great. But, you know, in order to do a settlement, there has to be an agreement. And sometimes the broadcaster is unwilling to give such a, make such a statement. Has Rachel had any conversation with Anna over the years or has it been completely, there's nothing to say to either of them?

I don't think there's very much to say since the trial. I don't believe that they've communicated in any significant extent. All right. Well, this is a really fascinating case. I'm curious to see where it goes, defamation cases. Oh, before I let you go, I do have one more question for you. So I see these two alternative, you can correct me from wrong, two alternative theories of the case. There's defamation and then there's this other alternative. of theory of false light invasion of privacy, what are you saying with respect to both claims? They're in the alternative. Essentially, defamation is intended to compensate somebody for their damages to reputation. That isn't a requirement under false light. And false light, all that's required is that you show, well, all of the other elements, but in addition, you have to show that what Netflix published was considered grossly offensive. All right. We'll continue to monitor this, Alexander Rufus Isaacs. Thank you so much for taking the time and to come on

sidebar. Thank you very much indeed. Honour to be on. Everyone, thanks for joining us here on Sidebar. You can check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Please subscribe. We very much appreciate that. Sidebar is produced by Sam Goldberg, YouTube manager Robert Zoki, Alyssa Fisher as our booking producer and video editor Logan Harris. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.