Netflix has settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Vanity Fair staff who claimed that Shonda Rhimes’ series “The Invention of Anna” falsely portrayed her.
Rachel DeRoche Williams, a former friend of con artist Anna Sorokin, filed a lawsuit in 2022, claiming the series gave the false impression that she had abandoned and betrayed Sorokin and portrayed her as “sneaky” and “greedy.”
“Williams and Netflix have resolved their lawsuit,” a Netflix spokesperson and her attorney, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, said in a joint statement Friday.
The series is based on a New York magazine article about Anna Delvey, a fake heiress who served nearly four years in prison for fraud.
Williams argued that the Netflix series aims to make viewers root for Sorokin and transform her from a real-life villain to a more likable antihero. In the process, she claimed, the victim turned her into a foil for Sorokin.
“Shonda Rhimes and the other producers and writers behind ‘Invention of Anna’ believed that the series needed a villain,” Williams’ attorney said in a court filing. “Because of their animosity towards Williams, they ironically decided to paint him as the villain.”
Netflix tried to throw out the lawsuit in 2024, arguing that the show’s creators had literary license to give their interpretation of events. A federal judge in Delaware rejected the motion.
Netflix then filed a motion for summary judgment following extensive discovery. At the time the lawsuit was resolved, the claim was still pending.
Rufus-Isaacs is also suing Netflix on behalf of Georgian chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili, who claimed she was disrespected on “The Queen’s Gambit,” and on behalf of Francisco “Pippin” Ferreras, who claimed the movie “No Limit” falsely suggested he murdered his wife.
Rufus-Isaacs argued that films based on true stories do not qualify for special exemptions from libel laws. When firing Rhimes in November 2024, he asked Rhimes if there were any rules about fictionalizing the actions of real people.
“We were in the position of accurately portraying people based on facts and their actions, and then fictionalizing moments that made those facts even clearer,” Rhimes said. “I feel like we wanted to capture the essence of that person in the moment we were portraying. And I had a rule of never portraying women in a terribly negative way. That’s not what we do. We create three-dimensional figures.”
