Anna Sorokin 's ex-friend Rachel Williams slammed the newNetflix series about the "Soho scammer."- "I think promoting this whole narrative and celebrating a sociopathic, narcissistic, proven criminal is wrong," she said.
Rachel Williams, the ex-friend of the real life Anna Sorokin (aka
"I think promoting this whole narrative and celebrating a sociopathic, narcissistic, proven criminal is wrong," Williams, who's portrayed by Katie Lowes in the Shonda Rhimes-produced series, said.
"Having had a front-row seat to [the Anna circus] for far too long, I've studied the way a con works more than anybody needs to," Williams continued. "You watch the spectacle, but you're not paying attention to what's being marketed."
According to Williams, who was working as a photo editor at Vanity Fair during her friendship with Sorokin, she hasn't even been able to finish the show, which focuses on Sorokin as she scams much of New York's wealthy and elite.
The biggest issue Williams took with the series is that, in her view, it has "a narrative designed to create empathy" for Sorokin, "a character who lacks" empathy. Sorokin was convicted in 2019 of grand larceny, among other charges. "The whole thing is very problematic," Williams said.
"The show's trying to straddle the divide between fact and fiction," Williams told Vanity Fair. "I think that's a particularly dangerous space, more than the true-crime medium, because people sometimes believe what they see in
"It's the emotional connections to a narrative that form our beliefs," she concluded.
Sorokin first rose to fame in 2018, after articles were published by New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, and the New York Post about Sorokin's attempts to con financial institutions out of money by pretending to be a wealthy German heiress.
In the New York magazine article by journalist Jessica Pressler, which went on to inspire the Netflix series, Williams was revealed to have been a close friend of Sorokin's, before an ill-fated trip to Morocco caused a rift between the two. As is depicted on the show, after Sorokin's credit card failed on the trip, Williams was forced to cover the entire $62,000 bill herself, and Sorokin never made good on her promises to repay Williams.
Williams ultimately went to the police and helped set up a sting operation where Sorokin was arrested in Los Angeles. A jury convicted Sorokin on charges of theft, larceny, and attempted theft and larceny in May 2019, though the jury acquitted Sorokin of the prosecutors' charge alleging she stole from Williams.
The "fake heiress" was released from a New York jail in February 2021 after serving about three-and-a-half years in prison. Sorokin is now in ICE custody due to immigration issues. She shared her thoughts about the Netflix show as well as her experience behind bars in a recent essay for Insider.