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Anna Sorokin’s former friend, Rachel DeLoache Williams, filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix on Monday.
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Williams said she was misrepresented in the Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” according to the lawsuit.
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The suit says the dealership subjected her to a “torrent of online abuse.”
A former friend of Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix, saying it allowed the Emmy-nominated series “Inventing Anna” to portray her as “greedy” and “snobbish.”
Rachel DeLoache Williams, who is played by Katie Lowes on the series, filed the lawsuit in Delaware’s US District Court on Monday.
The 58-page lawsuit claims that Netflix “made a deliberate decision for dramatic purposes to show Williams doing or saying things in the series that portray her as greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative and opportunistic.”
“As a result of Netflix’s false portrayal of her as vile and despicable, Williams was subjected to a torrent of online abuse, negative in-person interactions, and pejorative characterizations on podcasts,” the lawsuit added.
Netflix and Williams’ attorney, Alexander Rufus-Isaac, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.
Sorokin was convicted in 2019 of a scam in which she pretended to be a European heiress with a fortune of $60 million.
His story became the subject of the Netflix limited series, which was adapted from a New York magazine article. Netflix acquired the rights to the item and signed on to produce the show in 2018, Deadline reported.
Williams is a former Vanity Fair photo editor who befriended Sorokin in New York in 2016, when she was scamming her way into expensive travel, hotels and restaurants around the world.
In time, she became a victim of one of Sorokin’s scams when the fake heiress tricked her into incurring around $62,000 in debt on her corporate credit card during a trip to Morocco.
After many failed attempts to get paid, Williams went to the police and helped with a sting operation that led to Sorokin’s arrest in Los Angeles in 2017. Williams later wrote a Vanity Fair article and a book about the experience.
Williams’ lawsuit said she was misrepresented in the series, citing various aspects of how she was portrayed in the Netflix series, including taking advantage of Sorokin for free, abandoning Sorokin in Morocco, and leaving the false heiress as a friend when she could no longer to pay. stuff.
“Netflix gave fictitious names to many of the real-life protagonists in the Sorokin Saga who appear in the series, but did not give Williams the same protection,” the suit says. “Instead, he used her real name and her personal details in the series and chose an actress who resembled her in many ways.”
Sorokin was charged with a pair of indictments in 2017 and 2018. She was released in February after four years in prison, but was re-arrested for overstaying her visa and is currently being held in a New Jersey county jail by Immigration and Customs control. , awaiting deportation to Germany.
Sorokin told The Daily Beast in response to Williams’ lawsuit: “The truth hurts.”
Read the original article on Insider