‘Who’s Anna?’: How Julia Garner Got That Accent

The first thing we will notice about the performance of Julia Garner What Anna Devey, the con artist at the heart of Netflix’s new series ‘Who’s Anna?’, is her character’s vaguely European, if hard to place, accent. (In real life, Delvey was born in Russia and raised in Germany. Later, according to the writer Chloe Malle, “imitated American English by watching shows like ‘Gossip Girl'”). This was a way of speaking that was not easy for Garner to adopt. In fact, in an interview for the February cover of Town & Country, the actress, who is also known for playing Ruth Langmore in Ozark and Kimberly Breland in ‘The Americans,’ called it “the hardest accent I’ll ever do.”

It was explained like this: “My tongue on ‘Ozark’ is completely different from my tongue on Delvey. Anna’s tongue is kind of flat. It almost feels heavy and fat. I had to completely change the way I moved my tongue in three weeks.” But that work of perfecting Anna’s intonation paid off. Not only was it of great importance for the real life of Anna Delvey, whom Garner visited in prison: “He told me: ‘Please let me hear it'”but Shonda Rhimes, creator and executive producer of the series (also behind “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal”), she also sees him as a critical part of Garner’s incarnation of Anna.

“Julia spent a lot of time perfecting [el acento de Anna]”Rhimes said, “and ultimately I think it was one of the most important pieces in helping to embody this character”. New Yorker Julia Garner won an Emmy in 2020 for her leading role in ‘Ozark’, also on Netflix, and with ‘The Assistant’, in Filmin, she has proven to be one of the essential names of the American audiovisual relay. She accompanies the other great main character of ‘Who is Anna?’, Anna Chlumsky, who plays Vivian, a journalist tasked with investigating the extreme fraud case behind the titular Anna. We had seen Chlumsky before in the award-winning ‘Veep’.

The latest news about the Shonda Rhimes series suggests that Netflix paid close to 320,000 to Anna Sorokin to get the rights behind his amazing story real. Sorokin had claimed to be a German-born heiress with a trust fund and the assumed name of Anna Delvey, she eventually used the flippancy and privileges of the (really) wealthy class to defraud banks and acquaintances. In 2019 she was finally convicted of defrauding hotels, restaurants, banks, and more out of more than $200,000. However, his deception remains one of the blemishes on the clean record of the high class new yorker

‘Who is Anna?’ It can now be seen on Netflix.