Netflix is fighting in court to protect the private sources in ‘Inventing Anna’ magazine article

Rachel Williams is suing Netflix over the way she was portrayed in “Inventing Anna,” a show about scammer Anna Sorokin — also known as Anna Delvey.

The woman who alleges she was wrongfully portrayed in “Inventing Anna” is trying to get her hands on the confidential notes and sources of the journalist whose article inspired the Netflix show.

Rachel Williams, who was friends with the real-life Anna Sorokin, sued Netflix last year. The show, produced by Shonda Rhimes, is based on a viral New York magazine article by the journalist Jessica Pressler, who also consulted on its development.

In court filings this week, Netflix lawyers revealed that Williams’ lawyers want to obtain Pressler’s notes that refer to confidential sources for her story. Pressler, in a court filing, said that turning over the files would make sources less likely to trust her — and other journalists — in the future.

“Maintaining such confidentiality is critical to my role as a journalist and my ability to report will be substantially impaired if I am compelled to disclose my newsgathering material,” Pressler wrote in a declaration.

“Inventing Anna” tells the tale of how Sorokin, using the name Anna Delvey, scammed members of Manhattan’s elite by faking the identity of a European heiress with a $40 million fortune. Williams, who is portrayed using her real name, is a prominent character in the show as Sorokin’s closest friend.

The notes from Pressler are among a wide swath of documents that Williams’s lawyers want to obtain as part of the lawsuit. They aren’t the raw interviews and notes that Pressler took for the New York magazine story itself, but later statements from sources, script notes, and other memos that Pressler produced while “Inventing Anna” was in development.

Those notes, Netflix argues, nonetheless include “the identities of confidential sources and other confidential information obtained during newsgathering” that are crucial to protect.

According to Williams’s lawsuit, Netflix defamed her by portraying her as an opportunistic sidekick who was happy to siphon money, clothes, and vacations from Sorokin’s phony largesse — rather than as a friend who was duped.

Sorokin stuck Williams with a $60,000 American Express bill from a group vacation to Morocco, although the company later reimbursed the charges. Williams later wrote a book, “My Friend Anna,” where she recounted the panic and psychological damage of discovering her supposedly close friend was, in fact, a con artist and her worry that she’d lose her job as a photo editor for Vanity Fair. HBO had also purchased the rights to Williams’ story — which she partially recounted in an article for the magazine — but there are no public indications the project is being developed.

In a 2019 criminal trial, a Manhattan jury found Sorokin guilty of stealing from banks and other institutions as part of her scam but acquitted her of allegations that she stole from Williams. She was released from prison in 2021 and then promptly rearrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which sought to deport her to Germany, where her family lives. Sorokin, who is fighting both deportation and an appeal in her criminal case, was released from house arrest in August, her immigration lawyer previously told B-17. This week, she hosted several New York Fashion Week shows in collaboration with Pornhub, strutting down a runway Thursday night for the clothing brand Shao. She is also scheduled to be in the next season of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”

Netflix waived reporter’s privilege once it used the notes for ‘Inventing Anna,’ Williams’ lawyers argue

On October 4, Sorokin — who sold her life adaptation rights for “Inventing Anna” — is scheduled to testify for a deposition in Williams’s suit against Netflix. US District Judge Colm Connolly, who is overseeing the case in Delaware federal court (and who was himself once portrayed in the TV movie “And Never Let Her Go”), in March declined to fully dismiss the case and allowed it to move into the discovery phase.

Journalists in the United States are often protected by some form of reporter’s privilege, a legal doctrine that preserves the right not to be compelled to disclose information in court.

Pressler, in her court filing, wrote that Rhimes, her Shondaland, and Netflix all agreed to protect the confidentiality of her sources before she shared her “newsgathering material” with them.

Her New York magazine article about Sorokin raised important questions about elite institutions and “how our culture celebrates wealth,” she wrote.

“I believe that my Article raised matters of public concern, namely examining the way a young woman could con her way into rooms with the most elite, and convincing those in the banking, fashion, and art worlds that she was something she was not,” she wrote.

Julia Garner as Anna Sorokin and Katie Lowes as Rachel Wiliams in Netflix’s “Inventing Anna.”

In letters obtained by B-17, lawyers representing Williams have argued that Netflix forfeited any legal protections by sharing Pressler’s notes with different members of the production team for “Inventing Anna.”

“Netflix has asserted the privilege over an incredibly broad range of documents, including draft scripts, production schedules circulated to the whole cast and crew, and many other documents written by someone other than Ms. Pressler,” Williams’s lawyer Alexander Rufus-Isaacs told B-17 in an email. “Our position is that by sharing this information so widely, Netflix has waived the reporter’s privilege.”

Pressler declined to comment. A lawyer for Netflix referred questions to a company spokesperson, who also declined to comment. (Some of Netflix’s lawyers in the case, at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, also represent B-17 in unrelated First Amendment disputes.) Representatives for New York magazine’s parent company, Vox Media, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In court filings, Netflix’s lawyers say there are plenty of precedents for applying New York’s reporter shield law to adaptive works since the original purpose of the reporting was for a magazine article.

Pressler also wrote in her declaration that “Inventing Anna” would “use my newsgathering to further publicize these matters of public concern — and take these questions of who is a victim, who is a con, and who should be celebrated to a different audience.”

“It does not matter that these newsgathering materials were later used to create a dramatized series — Ms. Pressler and Netflix have an unqualified right under New York law to maintain the protection of these confidential sources’ identities — which were originally procured as part of Ms. Pressler’s writing process,” lawyers for Netflix wrote in a filing.