Netflix is being sued by a woman who said the streaming giant defamed her in their true crime limited series "Inventing Anna."
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Rachel DeLoache Williams, whose portrayed by actress Katie Lowes in the series about serial con artist Anna Sorokin, filed the lawsuit on Monday.
According to The Washington Post, Williams wrote about her time with Sorokin in a 2018 article for Vanity Fair and a book published in 2019 titled “My Friend Anna: The true story of Anna Delvey, the fake heiress of New York City.”
In the Netflix series, which is based off of a May 2018 New York magazine article, Williams said the series portrayed her "as a greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative and opportunistic person," according to court documents, the newspaper reported.
According to the media outlets, Williams said she was falsely portrayed in the Netflix series, which depicted her freeloading off Sorokin and then abandoning
her in Morocco, which she said in court documents never happened.
Because of her portrayal in the series, Williams alleged that she was "subjected to a torrent of online abuse (and) negative in-person interactions," according to court documents, the news outlets reported.
The news outlets reported Williams is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
According to The Post, the Netflix series opens up with the disclaimer: “This is an entirely true story, except for the parts that are completely made up.”
In 2019, Sorokin was convicted in New York on grand larceny and theft services charges and sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, The Post reported.
In February 2021, she was released from prison, but then a year later, the New York Times reported that she was taken back into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March.
