You can tell a lot about a person from their accent. For example, Anna Delvey’s accent is a mystery of enigmatic proportions – much like the woman herself. The so-called SoHo grifter, who swindled New York’s elite out of hundreds of thousands of dollars between 2013 and 2017 pretending to be a German heiress, is a gifted linguist who speaks seven languages. Under her monotone German infliction is a hint of her Russian homeland, mixed with notes of her school-taught British English and a light touch of American learnt from watching reruns of Gossip Girl.
For Julia Garner, who plays the high-profile scammer (real name Anna Sorokin) in the new Netflix series Inventing Anna, nailing the accent was imperative. “Once I got the accent down, everything clicked with the character,” explains Garner, 28, speaking over Zoom from Los Angeles ahead of her cover shoot at the iconic Studios 60 warehouse where Beyoncé, Janet Jackson and Lil Nas X are regulars. “Anna’s accent tells an important story: she’s covering up who she really is. She was lying to herself about not being Russian, so much so that she lost it from her voice. Her Russian comes out for a millisecond when she’s crying or really tired or drunk.”
