Julia Garner’s Insane ‘Inventing Anna’ Accent is So Bad it’s Good

Netflix’s Inventing Anna follows the strange tale of Anna Delvey (Julia Garner), the infamous socialite scammer. While most people might remember the beguiling portrait New York used on their Delvey exposé or the images of a bespectacled girl in court, Anna Delvey’s accent will likely be a revelation. (At least it was to me.)

As Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna, Julia Garner affects an idiosyncratic accent that is so bad, it’s good. It’s a layered vocal performance complete with German, Russian, and Valley Girl intonations. Is it close to how the real Anna Delvey talks? Sort of? Does it matter if Julia Garner nailed Anna Delvey’s accent or not? Nope! Because the best part of Inventing Anna is letting Garner stomp over each line delivery with that outrageous vocal performance.

Loosely based on Jessica Pressler’s bombshell New York piece “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People,” Inventing Anna tells two stories: that of Anna Sorokin, a Russian-born schemer who reinvented herself as German heiress Anna Delvey, and Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), the journalist attempting to unravel Anna’s secrets. Anna was born to a working-class family in the outskirts of Moscow. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Germany, giving Sorokin the opportunity to pursue schooling and internship opportunities in London and Paris. In 2013, Anna visited New York City for fashion week and just…stayed. By this time she had started calling herself Anna Delvey and was presenting herself as a German heiress whose vast riches were tied up overseas. She wound up conning the elite of Manhattan out of thousands of dollars of goods and services and almost pulled off tricking a bank into granting her a $22 million loan on false pretenses.

So what about Anna Delvey’s accent? Where did it come from? And how did Ozark alum Julia Garner develop her version of Anna Delvey’s speech?

According to IndieWire, Garner worked with long-time vocal coach Barbara Rubin to develop her take on Delvey’s distinctive accent. She would go on to reveal her touchstones for the voice when she appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote Inventing Anna:

Impressive right? Julia Garner’s attention to detail in how she layers all those sounds tells you everything you need to know about Anna Delvey’s backstory. She’s Russian-born, pretending to be German, and enmeshed in American culture. The only quibble I have is it’s a way more campy and theatric take on what the real Anna Delvey sounds like. Delvey’s true accent is far more subtle than the borderline cartoonish version Garner is giving us in Inventing Anna.

Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if Julia Garner’s accent is an exact perfect copy of Anna Delvey’s. I know that’s a radical statement in light of the fact that Garner is playing Delvey. However Garner’s job as an actress isn’t to be a perfect clone of Delvey, but to dramatically interpret her as a character. That’s what Garner’s accent, with its German base, Russian slips, and American intonation, does.

More importantly, Garner’s accent might be a bad Anna Delvey impression, but it’s an absolute delight to soak in as an audience member. Her commitment to its strangeness is incredible. The way she goes for broke with it tantamount to camp. Julia Garner’s Anna Delvey accent transcends the tired rubric of comparison and becomes its own source of delight.

Netflix’s Inventing Anna is a very messy series that makes a lot of misguided choices, narratively and stylistically speaking. One place where it shines, though, is in Garner’s odd performance. It’s explosive in a way that lives up to Anna Delvey’s own theatrically huge life story.

Watch Inventing Anna on Netflix