The real Rachel Williams just sued Netflix for what Inventing Anna did to her

Netflix's Inventing Anna dropped on the platform during the craze about real-life con artists and their exploits of luxury. Viewers were awed by the all the ways the con artists made their exploits, and sneered at their victims for falling for it and for having asked for it. 

In the case of Inventing Anna, the villain of the story was not the con artist - Anna Delvey or Anna Sorokin herself - but her "friend"/victim Rachel DeLoache Williams. Viewers had a great time looking at Williams as an opportunistic character who chased fame and was ultimately taught the lesson of greed.

Now, the real-life Rachel Williams is suing Netflix for the way she was portrayed in the series. 

The former Vanity Fair Photo Editor's lawsuit says that the Netflix series showed her as "a greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative and opportunistic person", which she is not.

Williams's lawsuit also asked why the show chose to use her real name and everything associated with her real self like her alma mater, job and company; when the same show used pseudonyms and unidentifiable descriptions for other real-life-based characters on the show. 

How Inventing Anna fictionalises the real Rachel Williams: When Inventing Anna dropped on Netflix, the Independent wrote, "It appears to have a personal vendetta against Williams." 

"Inventing Anna goes beyond the usual parameters of artistic licence. It appears to have a personal vendetta against Williams," writes @independent culture reporter @annabelnugent.

— Rachel DeLoache Williams (@rachel_deloache) February 17, 2022

That's because the show takes artistic leniency and fictionalises some accounts of the real Anna Delvey story. It also gives Rachel Williams her real identifiable information but fictionalises some elements of Williams's story with Anna.  

For example, Rachel Williams was never the villain of Jessica Pressler's New York Magazine feature, on which Inventing Anna is based. Williams is hardly mentioned in the story, and Delvey/Sorokin even tells Pressler from jail that she's upset about how things went with Rachel. 

It seems the demonisation of Williams stems from the fact that she sold the rights to her story to Netflix rival HBO. 

Why is Williams suing Netflix now? Deadline says that Rachel Williams could be suing Netflix as a "retribution on the installment plan" for her HBO deal that seems to be left only with scraps now with the fame of Inventing Anna; that and her reputation being tarnished with the portrayal. 

Even now, Rachel Williams gets comments such as "Best at taking advantage hall of famer", "Still trying to profit off of Anna?" and more on her Instagram posts. 

The context: Netflix's Inventing Anna is based on the real-life con artist Anna Sorokin AKA Anna Delvey, who duped the high society of New York into thinking that she's a German heiress with millions of dollars in a trust fund and almost convinced a reputed bank to lend her millions of dollars in loan. 

Rachel Williams was just one of her many victims, who had to foot a $62,000 (nearly Rs 50 lakh) bill for their luxurious trip to Marrakech. Williams and other people who accompanied Anna on the trip were under the impression that the "German heiress" would be paying for their extravagant trip. 

Rachel Williams later wrote a New York Times best-selling book My Friend Anna, and also made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the deal with HBO. Her $62,000 debt was also forgiven by American Express after Anna Delvey's trial came to the fore.