May 11, 2022 • 54 mins
For the last episode of the podcast, Stacey discusses Anna’s trial with her real life defense attorney, Todd Spodek. She also meets with Matt Byrne, who wrote the series finale, and who attended Anna’s trial as a representative from Shondaland and Netflix.
Anna’s defense attorney, Todd Spodek weighs in on the portrayal of his complex and ever evolving relationship with Anna, and on what the case meant to him personally. Anna was a difficult client at times, but she could also be profoundly charming and sweet. Todd reflects on the side of Anna he saw that he says no one else did. No one else except perhaps his good friend Jessica Pressler (Vivian’s character is based on Jessica). He talks about their friendship, his thought process behind Anna’s defense, what he thinks of his portrayal by Arian Moayed, and more.
Later in the episode, Matt Byrnes takes us inside the courtroom from his perspective, and reveals how the trial impacted the show’s ending. The trial was still ongoing as he and the rest of the writers were scripting the series. He gets into why they chose to make it a true story, “except for all the parts that are entirely made up,” and explains what his and Shonda’s intentions were behind the most crucial moments in the series and the finale.
To catch up before you listen, make sure you binge Inventing Anna the series on Netflix now.
Please rate, review, subscribe and share Inventing Anna: The Official Podcast with everyone you know.
Follow Todd @ToddSpodek on Twitter, and host Stacey Wilson Hunt @galinhollywood on Instagram and Twitter.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Inventing Anna the Official Podcast is a production of Shondaland
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome to Inventing
Anna the Official Podcast, your exclusive look inside the making
of the Shonda Land series on Netflix. I'm your host,
Stacy Wilson Hunt here with you for the final episode
(00:22):
of our series. Today's episode features Anna Delvie's real life attorney,
Todd Spodick, who's portrayed by actor Arian Moye in the show. Todd,
who may be closer to Anna Delvie than anyone, shares
what it's been like to see his own life streaming
on Netflix. He also offers up a fascinating insider's perspective
on Anna and her legal woes that only he can.
(00:45):
Later in the show, I speak with Shonda Land writer
Matt Byrne, a former journalist who penned the final episode
of the series and was actually present in the courtroom
for Anna's trial in New York. He shares fascinating memories
from that experience and his final thoughts on complex story.
But first, let's hear from Todd Spodeck. Hello, Todd, how
(01:11):
are you so happy to have you on the podcast?
I am wonderful Stacy. Thanks for having me here. It's
a pleasure. And first and foremost, how has your life
changed since the premiere of Inventing Anna? You know, I
gotta say this whole experience has been surreal. I mean,
to have you know, a character portray you and your
wife and your kids on Netflix is just really a
(01:31):
very strange experience. But it's been wonderful. Man. I'm flattered.
I'm grateful to be part of it. I think the
performances are great, I think the show is great. I've
gotten a lot of attention and people have reached out,
and I'm really pleased, to be honest. Bring me back
to the first time you met Anna Delvi. It was
in your office in New York somewhere right. What were
(01:54):
your first impressions of this person? And now that I
know more about you, I have a feeling you were
probably not too affected by the presentation of her case
and her overall uh, let's say uniqueness. Yeah. Yeah. So
my main office where the firm is is in downtown Manhattan.
And what happened was Anna kept calling, I think on
(02:15):
Friday night. So Friday night she's calling NonStop. I want
to come in, I want to meet Todd, and it
wasn't I just want a lawyer, It was I want
to meet Todd and remind people who may be forgetting
us how she got your name and why she contacted you.
In particular. My understanding is she was referred to me.
She knew of some of the other trials I've done.
Obviously I did the Alec Baldwin Genevieve Sabareine trial, which
(02:35):
got a lot of attention years ago his stalker. Yeah,
So I think there was just that, and she was like,
I need to meet you. I need to meet you.
I had already left the office for the day, and
that Saturday, one of my close friends was moving to Chicago.
So he was having a going away party, drinks, derbs,
(02:55):
all that jazz, everybody together, like something really special. And
my wife and kids and I were going to visit him.
And she kept calling and I said, look, come to
my Brooklyn office. I'll meet you. So my wife and
I both took a kid, me and my son. Oh,
and it's worth mentioned that we were dressed to the
nines because we were going out to this big party,
roofed top Champaigne's were we were looking fire. We were
(03:18):
great well, and I think Anna would appreciate, you know,
you being dressed to the ninth threat that. Yeah, she
liked that. So I'm in the office. I set up
my son, Zachary, in a separate room and I have
him on my laptop and he's watching cartoons. Anna comes
and I go meet her. And I meet a lot
of people in my world, you know, I meet murderers
and gang members to financial crime, you know, perpetrators, to
(03:43):
bitcoin scammers and tax for like, I just meet a
lot of interesting people. So I'm pretty savvy when it
comes to meeting someone, and I could kind of feel
them out quickly, so I could see she's distressed, and
she starts talking to me about the situation and she's like,
I'm a German, hairess, I dad, why are transfers all
that jazz? Now, I can tell you as a New
(04:05):
York or born and bread rich people never have problems
with money. If you're rich enough, motherfucker's will come to
where you need to be and give you a bag
of cash. They will make sure you get paid. And
I'm saying to myself, you know what, if you were
the type of woman that it's coming to my office
and a Saturday, and you want me to believe you're
a German heiress. I want to work with you. I
(04:27):
like that you kind of crazy and I like crazy. Right,
So you did sense in that moment there was a
dissonance between truth and fiction. Yeah, of course the woman
asked to stay over. Does that seem like what happens
with German heiress is? Do you see like the Princess
of England being like, hey, can I stay at my
criminal defense lawyers apartment? Probably not right? Right? Yeah, I knew,
(04:48):
I knew there was something up, but I liked it.
It was intriguing. I liked her vibe. I liked the story,
and I just like the fact that she thought, I
would you believe this was the case and remind us
what exactly that case centered on, because there obviously so
much came after this. At that point, she had been
charged with leaving a bill at a hotel. What reason
(05:11):
did she give you that day for not paying her bill?
You know, I don't remember exactly what she said, but
it definitely was something along the lines of I don't
have access to all the money right now, trust fund
blah blah blah. Okay, So there was a part of
you that was just sort of I can't not look.
I want to know what happens next with this person. Yeah,
I liked her. I liked her. I mean, you may
(05:32):
be like this person's bananas, but you kind of want
to know more. That's what happened. So obviously someone else
named Jessica Pressler felt the same about this. Yes, she
knew there was more to this story. And I'd love
to know when the two of you met and what
did you learn from each other and how did you
help each other, because in some senses you're on the
same team, but really you're supposed to be very separate entities. Yeah.
(05:52):
So when Anna first came to me, there was no story.
I mean, that's what I think a lot of people misunderstand.
There was no press, There was no story. It was
just me, my baby boy and her. And what happened
was and I had court for that misdemeanor case, and
we went to court, and somehow the local press in
(06:15):
New York, the Post and the local papers had picked
up that it was like stealing from a hotel and
it was kind of sexy for them, right. I think
the New York Post did a write up on that
exactly so somehow they picked up the criminal complaint. They
had enough information that it was sexy. They wrote some
very small, insignificant story. I've had a number of cases
(06:36):
that get attention like that's how it is, the gossipy stories.
So that happens. But I'm starting to get the feeling
that there's more to it because as I talked to
the district Attorney's office and I learned more about the case,
I start learning not about the banks, but I learned
more about other hotels and just other larcenies. So I'm
working on the case and then Jessica calls me and
(06:59):
she's you know, Jessica, you know these journalists are savvy.
Don't think they're not saving. They know what they're doing.
So Jessica calls me and she's like, I'd like to
meet you. I want to talk to you about a
case severs blah blah blah. And the truth is is
that almost universally, I'm like not now, you know, I
kind of brushed Jessica off, but if you ever need
(07:22):
something done, like a journalist is the person to go
to because they don't give a fuck. So Jessica starts
stalking me in a totally appropriate, okay, professional way, not
in anything bad, but she basically is like showing up
at court, showing up at arrangements, coming to my office
and she's like, look, there's more to the story and
(07:45):
I'm going to figure it out. And they're aggressive. So
she's kind of operating on her own trying to figure
out story. And the truth is there's a limit to
what I could share with her, you know, no matter what,
but certainly she may wind up obtaining materials that have
benefits to me. So after Jessica stalked me and almost
had to get the restraining order against the only kidding,
(08:06):
only kidding, we became really close and Jessica's my girl,
and and we hung out and we get drinks or whatever,
and we became close friends on our own, and we
had this strange relationship with Anna where Anna only really
had Jessica and me and I wound up in this
(08:26):
very strange situation where I'm her criminal defense lawyer. I'm
kind of like her best friend. She didn't really have
anyone else. Everyone else was trying to take advantage of
her or use her to their advantage or an opportunist.
And Jessica and I and I truly believe this, and
I know it's true. You know, we both did care
about her, like she was a young girl in a
(08:48):
foreign city in jail, and I think that the public
doesn't appreciate that right, Like it's hard to realize what
that experience must have been like for her, not whether
she deserved it, not whether she's innocent and guilty, But
just imagine for a second if you had a loved
one who was young, never been in jail before, dropped
(09:09):
into a German city jail, no family there, and no
friends there, the friends you have are cooperating with the
police against you. Like that's a really horrible situation for anyone.
And she's my client. I have her back, and that's it,
Like there is nothing more to it than that I
signed up to represent her and I was going to
(09:30):
do the fucking best I can to help her in
all respects, and that's the position I took. So me
and Jessica both had that kind of feeling. We both
were connected to her, and we both shared a sense
of her life is in our hands to some degree,
And there was a lot of back and forth about
what's the right thing for her to do, and Anna
would confide in Jessica, and then Jessica would confide in me,
(09:52):
and then I would talk to Anna and then it's
like a little relationship. It was like a very strange dynamic.
And to talk about the scene in the show which
kind of kicks off the character of Todd's journey in
taking on the case in a very formal way, the
truckload of discovery that the DA sends over. I want
(10:12):
every piece of evidence you have by the end of
this week. Are you asking me to waive my ethical
responsibility to act with due diligence and the execution of
my prosecutorial professional responsibilities, everything, everything you're sure end of
the week? Was that real? Did you actually have a
truckload of boxes that was that were sent over to you?
(10:34):
So it wasn't a truckload, but it was an enormous
amount of discovery. These financial crimes cases are always document heavy,
so it didn't play out that way, but it did
play out with me and my paralegal dealing with this
voluminous amount of discovery in a very short period of time.
(10:54):
And we have a you know, a busy firm. There's
a lot of cases and a lot of things going on.
So it certainly was is overwhelming to start with, I
can tell you that. And how long of the period
did you have to review all these materials? I mean,
I want to say was maybe three months or something
like that to really spend the time and go through them.
And you know, I was here day in day out
(11:16):
just getting organized and understanding how the timeline played out
and all the fun interesting characters that were coming out
of the woodwork, like a fucking Lord of the Rings movie,
And yeah, it was an interesting ride. And on that note,
what was the most shocking or surprising thing that sort
of was revealed to you through this discovery? What really
(11:37):
stood out to you? I mean I kind of was
bewildered that all these super prominent influencers and doctors and
lawyers and architects and all these like really highbrow people
who are in the public eye just literally opened the
door for her and they didn't care whether what she
(11:58):
was saying was true or whether she really had these
resources or these connections. Like I don't want to just
reiterate my closing statement, but they really were blinded by
the glamor and glades, like they really were. I met
her for like five minutes in Brooklyn on the way
to a party, and I was like, okay, Shawty, Like
you definitely are not telling me the truth. Like, and
(12:19):
you know, I'm just a kid from Brooklyn, Like, how
are you gonna be a partner at all these white
shoe law firms and you're gonna be all these big
people and you're not gonna do any due diligence whatsoever.
And I don't want to disparage everyone involved, but I
think that everyone I was so excited about the opportunity
to work with the German errats, with Royalty, with the
(12:41):
blue blood, with someone from this high brow background, that
they just closed their eyes and they were willing to
do it end And I imagine that's what it's like
working with celebrities to some degree, Like that's the vibe
they must give you. Because everyone had the same story.
Everyone was like, I met her at this convention, I
met her at this art event, I met her on
a to fucking Warren Buffett, Stay, what are you going
(13:02):
to think when you're in that situation. Let's talk about
the framing of the case and your strategy. So you've
talked about this sort of Frank Sinatra fake it till
you make it idea that Anna was just doing her
thing and you know, throwing a wrench in the system.
But she's just a woman with a dream. Anna followed
suit and became the person she wanted to be, a
(13:25):
person who would receive the red carpet from New York's elite.
She allowed everyone to believe the story they wanted to believe.
It wasn't a crime when Sinatra did it. It isn't
a crime now. So I got this case, and now
I'm like, all right, we're going to trial. This ship
is about to be a war. And I knew off
(13:46):
the bat there was no scenario where she was beating
five of those charges. It was just she was dead
to right. So you would really resign yourself to that.
Early on, the idea that she was beating any of
these charges was so preposterous because it whole thing was
a fraud. It was totally bananas. Once I started going
through the evidence and I'm like, Okay, it's not her name,
(14:07):
it's not her bank account, this is not her passport,
she has no money, there's not a dollar to account.
What was it going to say to the jury, Oh,
it's a mistake. Like there were hard facts that you
had that were not on your side. So what I
had to do is I had to analyze the charges
and the elements and say, what story can I tell
the jury that is comprised of a lot of different
(14:29):
people from a lot of different backgrounds, some rich, some poor,
some fat, some skinny, some from Manhattan, some from somewhere else,
men versus women, all these things that would relate. And
I'm a big Frank Sinatra fan. Okay, my grandmother was
a big Frank Sinatra fan. She used to cut school
to see Sinatra. I've read like every biography. I love Sinatra.
On October eleven, Frank Sinatra opened the Paramount Theater and
(14:54):
Times Square women swooned at the side of all blue eyes.
They literally fed to the public. This was the Sinatra effect,
but in reality it was strategically created by Sinatra's press agents,
all because if he can make it here, he'll make
(15:15):
it anywhere. And why I thought it was fitting is
one people come to New York to make it. This
is a common theme, and everyone can respect that. Everyone
comes to New York City. It's a hard place to live,
it's expensive, and if you're here, you likely are a
ambitious motivated individuals. So one I wanted to paint the
(15:36):
picture that this was someone who was trying to get
something done. It's not like she was creating some sort
of Ponzi scheme. She actually had a plan to make
this foundation real. The other thing that I wanted to
get across is that a lot of people take shortcuts
to get things set up. And a really good example
(15:58):
of this now is like Banksy or Cause the artist,
or jay Z or any of these people that we
all think of now as these pillars of the community.
And you could spend five million dollars of Christie's buying
a piece. But that's not how it started, right. No
one gave a ship about jay Z when he was
selling Cracked. No one gave a ship about Cause when
(16:19):
he was in New Jersey doing pieces. And I love Cause,
and no one cared about Banksy either. And so for Anna,
if Anna had the right background, if if she went
to Harvard Business School and she had family money, and
she had summer houses in Greenwage or wherever, all those
doors would open for her. But she didn't have anything.
So just like Banksy, college jay Z, whoever, took some
(16:41):
shortcuts to get where they are, that's what she did.
She took some shortcuts. So I want a jury to
understand that this isn't revolutionary. There are precedents for this behavior.
This is puffery. People do this. Oh my god, invest
with me. I'm gonna make you a billion dollars. Oh,
I'm on Instagram. Here's my jet, here's this. You know,
people do this. And I knew that the only way
(17:01):
we had a chance was to separate the charges that
were impossible to be with the charges that were possible,
build credibility with the jurors, let them like me, let
them feel that I'm being honest with them, and they'd
follow my logic through and it worked. More from behind
the scenes of inventing Anna coming up after this, Welcome
(17:33):
back to everybody. Let's continue with the interview um. One
of the writers on the show, Matt Burne, was actually
present in the courtroom for the trial. That's my man,
that's my man. I love Matt, you know, Matt, good guy.
(17:55):
He recalls hearing you and Anna screaming at each other
from the other side of the wall. Okay, Anna, listen,
now you've funked up this entire trial. I know, with
your stupid long Island accent and your stupid faith that
you would be a useless piece of ships. Why Anna,
shut the funk up and listen. And I'm wondering, what
(18:17):
do you remember about what those arguments were about. Was
it about the clothing? Was it about her just sort
of disdainful behavior during the trial. I mean, I will
say this, I'll say one, anybody who is incarcerated on
trial is going through some next level horror show of
an experience. An Okay, you're waking up at four in
(18:38):
the morning, you don't have your clothes, you're not like
dressed apart, you don't feel good, your life is on
the line, like the whole ship is fucked up. It's really,
you know, a tremendous feeling of pressure and being overwhelmed.
So that's one. Two. Anna didn't necessarily understand that a
criminal trial is not the revenue to just explain your
(19:01):
business plans or to just say you're a good person.
A trial is almost like a mathematical formula, and you
have to attack the formula. You have to attack the
elements of the crime and to some degree, and it
didn't care if she won a loss. You know, she
wanted to get her story out there. Her position did
(19:24):
not jive with any trial strategy that would succeed, and
so there was turmoil about that and also breaking news
coming out of Lower Manhattan. And is pretty controlling. She's
not someone who's like cool, I'll just do it your way.
She seems very obstinate at times. Exactly, I'm taking the
(19:46):
stand too incompetent ape this entire defense, and you are
completely my reputation, your reputation, So I don't play that
particularly to trial, and I have to do what I
think is best for her to a large degree, Like
(20:06):
I'm not we're not friends, you know what I'm saying, Like,
we're not friends from the beginning. I'm your lawyer. I'm
here to protect you. And I've done a million of
these trials and you've done zero. And I don't give
a funk what you are worried about what people are
gonna say and see and da da da da da.
That's not my concern. My concern is getting to the
funk out of jail. And how did you feel about
(20:26):
the Instagram account about her trial style? Was that something
that you felt hurt her case? Anyone who's going on
trial for any criminal case is going to be concerned
with how they look, just like when you woke up today,
you were concerned with how you look, and I was
concerned with how I look. That's a natural feeling. Add
On that your life is on the line, and if
you lose the case, you're going to jail for potentially
(20:47):
twelve years. Of course you're going to be concerned. Add
On that I'm trying to convey a savvy young businesswoman.
Add On that the entire world is watching you every
step of the way, talking about it, tweeting about instagramming
about a journalist, of writing blah blah blah blah blah.
So you add on all of that, is anyone really
(21:08):
surprised that she was like, oh my god, I want
to wear a cool outfit. Like it's logical that she
wants to wear a cool outfit. The illogical part is
the execution of all that, the fucking fits and the
drama and the yelling and the back and forth and
not wearing the outfits. But I don't knock her for
wanting to look good. I do think that it did
(21:30):
not help her case with the judge for her to
make such a big deal about the clothes and delay things,
and Judge Kiso, who was presiding over it, is a
very fair good judge, but there's a limit. I'm gonna
sip this iced coffee, Mr Spodick, and when I'm finished,
if your client isn't dressed and before me, I'm going
(21:54):
to be wildly, deeply unhappy. Yes, and don't let the
jump most size boo you. I drink fast. She has
a courtroom to run, she's a trial to run. So
I think that anything that we would do that isn't necessary,
that's going to upset or disturb the judge is not
(22:16):
in your best interests because the judge is going to
sentence you eventually. Yes, that does make sense. The judge
getting upset was not the right choice for her, but
I understand why she wanted to look a certain way. Yeah,
I'd like to talk about the show a little bit.
There's a great scene going back to episode one where
the character of Todd is telling his wife that he
(22:37):
doesn't want to quote park cars for other people his
whole life. Even though I'm with Margaret Vanderburn, porter of
the New York Porters, and even though that tuxedo costs
more than some people making a month, Even then I
still feel like one of the Valet's mhm. Now come
back in Long Island and I'm parking cars to help
(22:58):
my mom pay the rent. I was wondering how much
of that sentiment resonated with you, and how much of
that idea is driving you in your own life. You know,
I didn't necessarily park cars, but I grew up, you know,
with a single mom in Brooklyn with my brother, and
certainly didn't come from means. It wasn't poverty, but it
(23:20):
wasn't a glamorous childhood by any stretch of the imagination.
And my wife, I grew up in Manhanan on the
Upper East Side, and you know, she's a little bit fancy,
and certainly there's that dichotomy in our relationship, right Like
I'm much more street quote unquote and she's much more proper.
I do have a little bit of me against the
(23:42):
world vibe, and I think that that's what they were
conveying to the audience. And I'm a criminal lawyer, like
it works with who I am, and I'm someone who
strongly believes like you own your own destiny, Like your
success or your failure is not dependent on anyone else,
It's on you, you make it happen. That's how my
mom raised me. And I think that conversation that they
(24:04):
portrayed is accurate. I don't think those words are exactly accurate,
but certainly what they feeling is accurate. And tell me
your overall thoughts on the show, how you are depicted,
how the law is depicted, and also the wonderful actor
who plays you, Arian Moya, and he did such a
fantastic job. Arian is the man. What are your overall
(24:25):
feelings about the way that the work you do is portrayed,
and any favorite scenes that stick out to you. Okay,
so I love the whole show. I loved it all.
I think Arian is fantastic. Is a handsome devil. He
is very handsome, yes, and I had the chance to
meet him and we certainly have plans to connect soon
and hang out. So I think they did great. You know,
(24:46):
I'm not a fucking movie critic, Like I'm not here
to be like, oh my god, they did this, they
did that so funny. It's like clients constantly like your
office like this or your house. I'm like, it's fucking Hollywood,
Like what did you think? Like, it's not that you
mentory that's not me. It's not me. You know, I'm
humbled by this experience. I'm grateful for being part of it.
(25:07):
I'm grateful for all the people that I worked with
and connected with. So I loved it. Um. I think
that he portrayed me accurately to a degree. I think
the context between me and my wife is a real thing.
And I think Jessica must have shared that with jan
Do or whoever else, and you know, that's a real thing,
and that's that's cool, that's who I am, Like, it
(25:27):
is what it is. I think that my kids being
involved in my life and big part of my life
is obviously true. Like my kids are my life. I
love my kids. And they're also like, oh my god,
we're on TV two, you know, like it's cool, like
we're all kind of cavelling over it. And um, as
far as the relationship between me and the prosecutor, you know,
(25:51):
hand DA's office is a powerful DA's office. There's a
lot of resources, a lot of people. They had a
fucking crew at trial, and yeah, I wanted to spank
this out of them. Of course I did, because that's
what a criminal lawyer wants to do. And I also
liked that it was just me against them. It made
me feel good about myself, like I don't need twenty
(26:11):
people here, I'll do this by myself. And you know
that when when you say that, it sounds so much
like something Anna herself would say. And do you think
that's how you connected emotionally with her? Anna is admirable
in a lot of ways. I don't condone criminality, That's
not what I do. But I like hustle, and I
like people who get ship done. And if you had
(26:33):
to plan like our bossle, let's just say, do you
think Anna could achieve it? You know she could achieve it, right,
But there are some people out there that you know,
they can't even make it to dinner on time, they
can't plan anything. So to me, I'm impressed by Anna,
and I'm impressed that she did it. I don't know
in another fucking country, Like can you imagine if you
(26:53):
dropped me off to fucking Germany right now? It was like,
all right, Todd, like set up some private solo house
type organization like that be impossible. So whether she took
shortcuts committed crimes, still everyone's money. The fact is that
she she actually made progress to getting it done, and
she did it on her own, and I liked I
(27:13):
liked her, and I like that vibe and I saw
some of it in me too. And do you have
any mementos from working with her or the trial or
anything that you'll keep as a keepsake if you will, yes. So,
you know, you do these trials, and I've done a
lot of trials, and sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes
it does, but it's rare that the clients are appreciative.
(27:36):
It's just the reality of this business, right because if
you win and you still go to jail, you're still upset.
So after the trial, Anna wrote me a handwritten thank
you know that I saved and it's actually in my
office over there. And I appreciate that, even in the
dark times for her, right even though she lost some
(27:58):
of the counts and she was going to be in
jail and she was going to be deported, you know,
she took the time to be like, godd, I really
appreciate everything, and I'm really grateful and I'm humbled by it.
You know, she didn't have to do that, and I
thought that was really nice, and she's a decent person,
you know. And then my final question for you, is
the show really lays out this idea that Anna Sirokan
(28:20):
and Anna Delby are, in essence, two different people. One
could be sort of more of a fabricated version of
the other. Do you see them as distinct have the
same hole, and do they feel different to you as people?
I would say that there's the outside Anna, right, Anna
that communicates with the world, and that's someone who wants
(28:41):
to be viewed a certain way, right, And that's like
the tough, ambitious entrepreneur I don't give a fuck, like
I'm gonna make it happen. And that's one side of her, right,
and that is the Anna Delvy person. And then there's
the side that I got to know. And this sounds cheesy,
Like I get that this sounds cheesy, but like I
saw her at the lowest and when it was just
(29:03):
me and her, and where's moments of intimacy where she
was Anna Surkin, the real person, And she was a young,
frightened girl on Riker's Island, and she was crying to
me and she was like, you have to help me.
And I tried to. I certainly tried to. And everyone
(29:24):
in this world is like multifaceted right, Like nobody could
be defined by one thing, and certainly someone as complex
as Anna. The public has to realize is that there
are many aspects of her and you're watching a fictionalized
Netflix show like that's not the real person. Um. I
don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing,
(29:45):
but I definitely did see a side of her that
other people did well. Todd, we really do appreciate your time.
You really have brought such a new level of understanding
to this complex case and also to your work, And
really thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Yeah,
I'm happy to be part of it. If you need
anything on me, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back
(30:06):
with Shonda Land writer Matt Byrne, who attended Anna's trial
and wrote the series finale. And we are back with
(30:26):
writer Matt Burne. Before we talk about inventing Anna, I
do want to acknowledge that you have a background in journalism,
as do I, and I want us to talk about, firstly,
how you make the transition from our in the trenches
job as a journalist and what is it like to
(30:49):
become a TV writer. What did the two disciplines have
in common? Oh, boy. Um, the transitions are kind of
a long story. I was kind of forced into it
in a way. I sort of tried switched careers. I
was producing news for CNN throughout my twenties, which was
an amazing experience all in all, and took me all
over the world and and took me behind the scenes
(31:09):
of power and but it really wasn't my calling. And
so I switched careers and came out to USC and
did their producing program. I immediately after taking a stab
at a script, knew that I had to just kind
of re engineer that program to become a writer. That's
the quick story on how I transition. I started hustling
(31:30):
for jobs, and I was a researcher for the writers
of Grey's Anatomy, so learned how like a writer's room
works there and and sorry, what was the second part
of your question, Stacy? I was just curious what the
two disciplines have in common that you notice in terms
of overlap the way a newsroom works versus the way
a writer's room works. People are a lot nicer in
(31:50):
a writer's room. That's good to know. I understand the
pressure cooker vibe of news is yeah, people are a
lot nicer in Hollywood than there in d C. So
inventing Anna, and in talking to Shonda and Jessica Pressler
and a lot of your colleagues, we have really sinsed
this kind of magical hybrid of a story based on
(32:10):
true events but also creative license. So I'd love for
you to walk me through what your experience was working
with Shonda in the writer's room to map out this series.
Why not tell it in a linear fashion versus the
way that you did time jumps You sort of devoted
an episode to each character. Walk me through those decisions.
I think, yes, it's a true story, but with a
(32:32):
completely unreliable narrator. So I wouldn't say it forced our hand,
but it certainly made it more interesting to tell everyone
else's experience with Anna versus trying to sort of chronicle
her narrative directly, because it's full of manipulation lies. There
are a few holes in her story, right, Yeah. And
(32:53):
also what was fascinating is that each of them sort
of met a different Anna and had a different experience
with her, And I think some of that seemed to
our sense to be projected upon her by those individuals,
And what maybe what they needed and what they wanted.
And and also because Anna considered turn a corner and
be a different person with a different person in order
(33:15):
to get what she needs. So we have this rich
world that Jessica Pressler gave us outside of Anna herself,
all these characters who chronicle they're very specific experience with Anna,
and that kind of help dictate the narrative style in
a way. It's amazing, And you referenced Jessica's incredible story
and her reporting and the words that come to me
(33:38):
with with that our world building. She created this incredible
world in which Anna was just one of the characters.
Tell me how you use Jessica's article as a blueprint. Yeah. God,
she gave us so much good material. I think, so
many great characters and stories, but you know they're also
a lot of holes around the sort of wise and
(33:59):
how so that's where we stepped in and it felt
like in terms of what we added, you know, a
lot of it was the direct interpersonal relationships and what
each character experienced with Hannah beyond the sort of facts
of it all, but the emotional story because we had
(34:20):
these sort of puzzle pieces of a story, it was
sort of gave us the freedom to go down different
avenues of what if this was the reason why this happened,
or what if? You know. I think really what we
focused on in terms of trying to fill in the
gaps most of all, really was Annah's story. Just the
(34:43):
simple question of like was she gonna take off with
that twenty million dollars from the banks or was she
going to pour it into this foundation? You know what
I mean? Like I still don't know the answer that question.
No one knows the answer to that question, you know.
So that right in there of its self gave us
license to sort of ask the questions we want to
(35:04):
ask through these characters, narratives and posts impossible decision making
behind her behavior, and then allow for the audience to
reject or inject their own feelings about that. And you
did exhaustive research as a room, as a production, in
terms of interviewing the real life people, legal documents. As
(35:27):
a former journalist, you probably also kind of felt like
you were putting a story together, right. You're compiling all
your sourcing, You're vetting accounts of events. I would love
to know what was your favorite or shocking discovery. I
think Anna, the character says this in the story in
the last scene, but it's how willing she was to
(35:48):
withstand the sort of pressures of making people uncomfortable to
get what she wants. You don't deserve this kind of
a sentence. Mistakes were made was to overestimate people's ability
to handle stress. Beyond the pages of Jessica's story and
the and all the research that we did, it was
(36:09):
witnessing her in person. I think was was the most
shocking thing of how brazen and delightful she is. At
the same time, Wow, and we're going to do a
deep dive into the trial and your experiences uh being
present for that incredible event. I want to make time
for us to discuss your incredible work. On episode two,
the Double War, Anna, tell me a little bit about
(36:30):
the characters of Chase and Vowel and why they are
specifically important in this episode. To open up Anna for
the viewer. You know, I think it's about that period
of time where you're trying to find yourself as in
your mid twenties, and it's also having true friends. I
think this is in Vale that the potentially last real
(36:53):
true friendship without any ties, without any quick quote, you know,
just like someone who loved her, and she loved back
in a genuine way and they were real pals. And
then so you know, she's kind of playing with this
character of herself, with Theanna Delvi of it all. I
don't think she's really found it yet. In this episode.
It's almost like an outfit she's trying on in a
(37:14):
way exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like she's sort of
strutting it around and trying out different things and she
has no direction yet. And then once she does, it's
sort of the the sacrifice that's involved for her in
having to make that decision to ditch the one person
who loves you for who you are, maybe more than anything,
(37:35):
because Chase is not that person. It's well, you know,
and so there's a lot of heartbreak in that, I think,
and the sort of disorienting nature of not knowing why
you're ditched by your very best friend. I mean, that's
just one of those weird things that can happen in
life where you have these relationships at end and you
still process them for years, I think, and you don't
(37:58):
really have answers, you know, just an outcome of and
a sort of sacrifice that Anna has to make in
order to protect her anonymity as she explores her true passion,
and that's sort of what we tried to explore most
of all in this episode. I think that comes through
and you do see it's sort of sort of the
collateral damage of all of that kind of mountain in
(38:21):
this episode. It's really well done. So now let's jump
to ending the show. Let's talk about the endpoint for
the narrative and how you're balancing your plans with this
trial with this real life. You know, there's still this
organic story that keeps going and going and going. Right. Yeah,
it felt like the trial was ended up being the
(38:43):
right endpoint because it was sort of the culmination of
for everyone's characters having to make decisions about how they
felt about Anna, which I said, Team Anna, Is this
a team Rachel? Yeah, I'm Switzerland in all this whether
or not they're going to support Anna and to what
(39:05):
extent and what they need Anna for and especially for
Todd specifically and what he projects onto Anna for his
own needs. And I think there's a lot of that,
a lot of talk of Anna's father in that last episode,
and I think when I look at that, I'm like, really,
that's all more important to Todd than it is to Anna.
(39:25):
You know, it's interesting, like what he thinks she needs
and and well he is like a father figure to
her too in a sense, or he's trying to guide
her in a kind almost fatherly way, but he just
keeps butting up against her obstinates. Yeah, but does she
need that or does he need that? Does she see
that he needs to be that part? And so plays
you know, the sort of difficult but charming daughtering sort
(39:48):
of going back and forth, and also just helps the
overall question of Anna too is like is she this
sort of innocent kid who tried to do something big
or is she a completely manipulative little monster for lack
of a correct psychological term for her, you know what
I mean, Like that's the question this series. And so
(40:10):
I think the trial helps all of us and the characters,
especially Delvin, and try and answer that question for ourselves.
And in speaking of Todd, of course this her attorney
tell me about crafting him for the screen, because you
also had access to him in real life. He's quite
a character and I'm wondering how you balanced the real Todd,
who was very willing to talk with you and was
(40:30):
very open and suring his experiences with the Todd that
we see on screen, and what do they have in common.
We'll start with what they don't have in common, which
is that the Todd we see on screen curses less,
and he curses a lot on screen. And he's a
very very funny person and loyal and sharp and and
a very good attorney. Part of that is just the
(40:52):
great job Arean did with the character and the sort
of policy over here and Shonda Landa's we write the
words and we don't tell the actors how to play them.
And so I love what he did. I think it's
different than Todd, but it's very I think, soulful and
smart and really accurate to the spirit of Todd. And
(41:13):
so I love seeing that. I love putting something on
the page and sort of approximating a person and feeling
in your own feelings about it. But then you hand
it over to an actor and they do their own thing.
And it's been a joy on this show throughout. Yeah,
and Todd really does seem to care, you know, while
he enjoys some of the limelight, and you know, this
is kind of a a milestone event for his career,
(41:36):
he really does ultimately care about her, and I think
that does come through. He really does, and I felt
that when I hung out with him at the trial
entirely even as sort of abusive, truly abusive towards him,
and it could be We talked to the jury after
the trial as well. We kind of spread out and
tried to talk to jurors, some of the journalists and
I and they talked about how they could hear them
(42:00):
fighting through the walls, like as they were, yeah, in
their jury holding room waiting for Todd and Anna to
come out so they could start the trial. They would
hear them screaming at each other, Oh my goodness, almost
like family members. Yeah. Yeah, but he I think, you know,
he's Todd is very charmed by her as well, and
(42:20):
you know, it keeps it professional, is it's not a
familial relationship at all, but continues to this very moment
to support her and be an ear for her and
look out for her, which is beyond his call of duty.
So Matt, I would love to hear some details about
what it was like to be at the trial in
the courtroom and witness sing all of this sort of
(42:43):
circus like beer and the tone, the energy, what was
the vibe being there? It was chaos. Honestly at the beginning.
Everything that happened in the episode is true. That she
would not come out, which felt so crazy to me.
And then like not many people there maybe two journalists
and a few photographers and three or four other people
(43:04):
kind of thing. So it was it was very empty,
which was surprising to me too, because I thought there'd
be tons of interest in this case. I remember thinking like, oh,
I'll have to get tickets or you know, no, no
one showed up. This is not a gut start for
our team. I'm very underwoned without proparation. On day one,
we have to go. No, don't crowd my entrance. My
(43:30):
first impressions were that Todd was completely like being incompetent
to be frank, I just didn't know this character well
enough at this point. I didn't know that what she
was capable of, that anyone could be that obstinate that
like she's going to hold up her own trial self sabotage. Really,
it just felt completely insane to me. This whole business
(43:53):
with the clothes felt completely self destructive and crazy at
the time, and so I, I, you know, wrongfully immediately
kind of blame the attorney for not be able to
handle his client a little bit, and so he just
felt like he was flailing, which he was at the
moment watching this literally running down the you know, exchanging
of bags of clothes and just to get the trial started. Uh,
(44:19):
I was sort of blown away. And then and then
the opening statements began at Todd's brilliant every person that
walks in here and sits in that chair wanted to
give Anna money because they wanted to be in business
with her, to be close to Anna Delvy, the German heiress.
(44:40):
Would they have wanted to be in business with Anna Sorkin,
a middle class foreigner. No, Anna had to fake it
until she made it. Think youn hear a pin drop.
The entire jury is laughing where they need to laugh,
and nodding where they need to not. And East owns
the room in a way that I felt throughout my
(45:03):
body was incredible. Within an hour or two, he had
completely changed my impression of him or and then just
the weird thing of like Anna would do this thing
where she I think because Jessica had told her who
I was, so she did know who you were. She
didn't know my name but she knew that I was
(45:23):
like a representative of this project, and so she would
kind of turn around and give me these looks like
pouty or flirty or someone like all of these different looks,
and she was sort of trying to look engage a
response for me, almost like she was like writing the
(45:44):
character for you, for you to take notes. Yeah, you know.
And what I found out later was because she asked Jessica,
she said, I know how the jury feels about me.
That's part of her gift is sort of being able
to read emotions and read a room. But I don't
know how she called me Rosy Cheeks. I don't know
how Rosy Cheeks feels about me for Rosy Cheeks. So
(46:09):
I felt good about that because my journalism trading of
just I just kind of gave nothing back. So it's
fascinating to witness her try on these different faces in
order to get a response from me and try and
engage in a way that told me so much about
her character, and then realizing that all of those emotions
were faked in order to try and get inside my
(46:32):
head and figure out which methodology she might be able
to use emotionally doing engage with with me and as
we of course come to learn about Anna in the series,
the worst thing that someone can do to her is
ignore her, right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I just extinctively kind
of just didn't I want to engage in any form.
You know. It's the whole journalist thing of just not
(46:53):
being part of the story too. That's my training, and
so that was what I tried to do. The best
was just witnessed. At what point did you find out
about the Instagram account? Was it when the trial was
going on that people were sort of buzzing about that.
We found out about the incident account when the trial
was going on, and literally watched more people start to
show up to the trial too, and and it sort
(47:16):
of fed into media interests as well. And so it
was a move on her part. It was a move,
that's for sure. I did want to ask there's a
really scary bailiff in the show where she screams at
everyone to sit down. Let's bring in the jury. Everybody
sit down now? Was that based in reality? What did
(47:41):
they really have to wrangle people that intensely to get
them to behave and be quiet? Yeah? In fact, I
kept asking the director to tell her to go even
bigger with it because it was yeah and then and
the actor did a terrific job with it, but it
was even it was even louder in real life, and
the judge was as sweet and direct and funny and
sort of in control of the proceedings. Are actor did
(48:05):
a wonderful job of capturing that. So and tell me
just in terms of timeline when the trial took place
versus where you were in production or in the writer's
room at that point, and how those two concurrent timelines
interacted with each other. We were very early stages of
writing when the trial was taking place, and so we
had really great stuff from Jessica Pressler. It felt like
(48:26):
we have a whole world, but we don't know what happened.
So I'm glad that we were able to wait for
that trial in order to write this because it informs
so much, and it really informed a lot of what
we did, and then we sort of backed into it.
I see. So it's almost as if the finale took
shape and then you retroactively crafted your ark for the show. Yeah,
(48:49):
pretty much. Yeah, I wouldn't say that it was that
direct of a process, but sure, yeah, let's and there's
a great scene that I loved where Vivian is slacking
her colleagues the verdicts as they come down, and I
hear you were actually doing that with your colleagues as well.
Is that true? Yes? I was trying to include them
(49:09):
as much as possible, So yes, I was slacking them
live as the verdict was coming down. Yeah. And then
Shawnda asked me to put that in the show. Right, Well,
you were the correspondent, right, I was the correspondent reporting
live from the scene. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. One amazing experience
was they rebuilt the court room exactly how it was,
(49:30):
so I don't know if that ever influences the actors
at all, but it felt so real, you know, just
kind of a dirty New York courtroom, and that in
and of itself was really strange to be shooting and
what felt like the actual courtroom. Right, And I'd love
to talk about the final scene between Vivian and Anna. Yeah,
(49:53):
I'm I just wanted to say I'm sorry for how
everything turned out. For all of this, I thought you
thought what I know, you didn't think you were going
to rescue me, and I've no touching. Tell me how
(50:14):
you crafted that moment. Tell me about your intentions and
what were your hopes for tying the story up. I
think the whole question of the series from Vivian's perspective,
is is there anything behind this the artifice of Anna
Delve The hope of that scene is to really get
to the core of that, or to help the audience
(50:37):
sort of ask and answer the question for themselves. Shanda
and I went back and forth a lot on the
scene and worked on this scene together because they really
did have to sort of address some major stuff for us.
I think what we found is that we're at the
end of this series, but do we really have an
answer for who Anna Delvi is and whether or not
(50:59):
everything is trans actional? And given that Vivian so gotten
so emotionally invested, feeling overly emotionally invested, that feeling of
like have I done that to a charlatan or somebody
who's incapable of emotional investment? Like and is there a
little bit of Anna in me? Like did I take
(51:19):
advantage of a situation to my own benefit but hurt
the other party involved in the same way that you
could say that Anna Delvi did with Rachel? And that
what has become of me? But I think really at
the course, like is this person a person? And then
from Anna's perspectives, just like do I need people or
is everything just situational? And I can toss them aside.
(51:45):
I don't like you. You have terrible shoes. This was
a transaction. We had to deal. Yeah, No, it's okay.
You might good on your part with the deal. You
said to the famous and you did no touching. You'll
come visit. No touching, you'll come visit. When something has
(52:09):
a fine point, like the end of Lost or the
end of Breaking Bad, you can debate the merit of
how they ended the show, but there isn't like that
discussion possibility after the fact, whereas here it's this is
a moral debate. Yeah, and and we are just really
trying to say, here's what confused and fascinated us, and
here's what we think could have happened, and here's what
(52:30):
we imagine is through these real people's lives, like how
you would feel and what you would do. So that
for us was really the most important thing, was to
sort of give people something to dive into themselves and
and answer for themselves from their own experience. So you're
glad you made the lead from journalism to TV writer,
never gone back. Well, thank you so much, Matt. This
(52:52):
has been incredible and such a learning experience for anyone
who's watched the show to hear even just a glimpse
of how it was put together. It's really fantastic. So
think you so much. So nice talking to you, Stacy.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining
us for Inventing Anna the official podcast. I hope we've
(53:14):
quenched some of your thirst for Anna delby and giving
you juicy details about the making of this intriguing series.
If you're new to this podcast, there are actually hours
and hours of Inventing Anna content to enjoy, including interviews
with the real people portrayed in the show, conversations with
cast members, insights from creator Shaunda Rhymes, and so much more.
(53:35):
It's been a total blast being your guide on this
wild tour behind the scenes of Inventing Anna. Thank you
so much for having me. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
please leave us a rate or review, share, subscribe like
all of that good stuff. And if you haven't finished
watching Shawna Lands Inventing Anna on Netflix, I recommend you
(53:58):
go do that. Inventing Anna. The Official podcast is executive
produced by Sandy Bailey, Lauren Homan, Tyler Clang, and Gabrielle Collins.
Our producer and editor is Nicholas Harder, and the show
is produced and hosted by me Stacy Wilson Hunt. Inventing Anna.
(54:23):
The Official Podcast is a production of Schondeland Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Schondeland Audio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Inventing Anna the Official Podcast is a production of Shondaland
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome to Inventing
Anna the Official Podcast, your exclusive look inside the making
of the Shonda Land series on Netflix. I'm your host,
Stacy Wilson Hunt here with you for the final episode
(00:22):
of our series. Today's episode features Anna Delvie's real life attorney,
Todd Spodick, who's portrayed by actor Arian Moye in the show. Todd,
who may be closer to Anna Delvie than anyone, shares
what it's been like to see his own life streaming
on Netflix. He also offers up a fascinating insider's perspective
on Anna and her legal woes that only he can.
(00:45):
Later in the show, I speak with Shonda Land writer
Matt Byrne, a former journalist who penned the final episode
of the series and was actually present in the courtroom
for Anna's trial in New York. He shares fascinating memories
from that experience and his final thoughts on complex story.
But first, let's hear from Todd Spodeck. Hello, Todd, how
(01:11):
are you so happy to have you on the podcast?
I am wonderful Stacy. Thanks for having me here. It's
a pleasure. And first and foremost, how has your life
changed since the premiere of Inventing Anna? You know, I
gotta say this whole experience has been surreal. I mean,
to have you know, a character portray you and your
wife and your kids on Netflix is just really a
(01:31):
very strange experience. But it's been wonderful. Man. I'm flattered.
I'm grateful to be part of it. I think the
performances are great, I think the show is great. I've
gotten a lot of attention and people have reached out,
and I'm really pleased, to be honest. Bring me back
to the first time you met Anna Delvi. It was
in your office in New York somewhere right. What were
(01:54):
your first impressions of this person? And now that I
know more about you, I have a feeling you were
probably not too affected by the presentation of her case
and her overall uh, let's say uniqueness. Yeah. Yeah. So
my main office where the firm is is in downtown Manhattan.
And what happened was Anna kept calling, I think on
(02:15):
Friday night. So Friday night she's calling NonStop. I want
to come in, I want to meet Todd, and it
wasn't I just want a lawyer, It was I want
to meet Todd and remind people who may be forgetting
us how she got your name and why she contacted you.
In particular. My understanding is she was referred to me.
She knew of some of the other trials I've done.
Obviously I did the Alec Baldwin Genevieve Sabareine trial, which
(02:35):
got a lot of attention years ago his stalker. Yeah,
So I think there was just that, and she was like,
I need to meet you. I need to meet you.
I had already left the office for the day, and
that Saturday, one of my close friends was moving to Chicago.
So he was having a going away party, drinks, derbs,
(02:55):
all that jazz, everybody together, like something really special. And
my wife and kids and I were going to visit him.
And she kept calling and I said, look, come to
my Brooklyn office. I'll meet you. So my wife and
I both took a kid, me and my son. Oh,
and it's worth mentioned that we were dressed to the
nines because we were going out to this big party,
roofed top Champaigne's were we were looking fire. We were
(03:18):
great well, and I think Anna would appreciate, you know,
you being dressed to the ninth threat that. Yeah, she
liked that. So I'm in the office. I set up
my son, Zachary, in a separate room and I have
him on my laptop and he's watching cartoons. Anna comes
and I go meet her. And I meet a lot
of people in my world, you know, I meet murderers
and gang members to financial crime, you know, perpetrators, to
(03:43):
bitcoin scammers and tax for like, I just meet a
lot of interesting people. So I'm pretty savvy when it
comes to meeting someone, and I could kind of feel
them out quickly, so I could see she's distressed, and
she starts talking to me about the situation and she's like,
I'm a German, hairess, I dad, why are transfers all
that jazz? Now, I can tell you as a New
(04:05):
York or born and bread rich people never have problems
with money. If you're rich enough, motherfucker's will come to
where you need to be and give you a bag
of cash. They will make sure you get paid. And
I'm saying to myself, you know what, if you were
the type of woman that it's coming to my office
and a Saturday, and you want me to believe you're
a German heiress. I want to work with you. I
(04:27):
like that you kind of crazy and I like crazy. Right,
So you did sense in that moment there was a
dissonance between truth and fiction. Yeah, of course the woman
asked to stay over. Does that seem like what happens
with German heiress is? Do you see like the Princess
of England being like, hey, can I stay at my
criminal defense lawyers apartment? Probably not right? Right? Yeah, I knew,
(04:48):
I knew there was something up, but I liked it.
It was intriguing. I liked her vibe. I liked the story,
and I just like the fact that she thought, I
would you believe this was the case and remind us
what exactly that case centered on, because there obviously so
much came after this. At that point, she had been
charged with leaving a bill at a hotel. What reason
(05:11):
did she give you that day for not paying her bill?
You know, I don't remember exactly what she said, but
it definitely was something along the lines of I don't
have access to all the money right now, trust fund
blah blah blah. Okay, So there was a part of
you that was just sort of I can't not look.
I want to know what happens next with this person. Yeah,
I liked her. I liked her. I mean, you may
(05:32):
be like this person's bananas, but you kind of want
to know more. That's what happened. So obviously someone else
named Jessica Pressler felt the same about this. Yes, she
knew there was more to this story. And I'd love
to know when the two of you met and what
did you learn from each other and how did you
help each other, because in some senses you're on the
same team, but really you're supposed to be very separate entities. Yeah.
(05:52):
So when Anna first came to me, there was no story.
I mean, that's what I think a lot of people misunderstand.
There was no press, There was no story. It was
just me, my baby boy and her. And what happened
was and I had court for that misdemeanor case, and
we went to court, and somehow the local press in
(06:15):
New York, the Post and the local papers had picked
up that it was like stealing from a hotel and
it was kind of sexy for them, right. I think
the New York Post did a write up on that
exactly so somehow they picked up the criminal complaint. They
had enough information that it was sexy. They wrote some
very small, insignificant story. I've had a number of cases
(06:36):
that get attention like that's how it is, the gossipy stories.
So that happens. But I'm starting to get the feeling
that there's more to it because as I talked to
the district Attorney's office and I learned more about the case,
I start learning not about the banks, but I learned
more about other hotels and just other larcenies. So I'm
working on the case and then Jessica calls me and
(06:59):
she's you know, Jessica, you know these journalists are savvy.
Don't think they're not saving. They know what they're doing.
So Jessica calls me and she's like, I'd like to
meet you. I want to talk to you about a
case severs blah blah blah. And the truth is is
that almost universally, I'm like not now, you know, I
kind of brushed Jessica off, but if you ever need
(07:22):
something done, like a journalist is the person to go
to because they don't give a fuck. So Jessica starts
stalking me in a totally appropriate, okay, professional way, not
in anything bad, but she basically is like showing up
at court, showing up at arrangements, coming to my office
and she's like, look, there's more to the story and
(07:45):
I'm going to figure it out. And they're aggressive. So
she's kind of operating on her own trying to figure
out story. And the truth is there's a limit to
what I could share with her, you know, no matter what,
but certainly she may wind up obtaining materials that have
benefits to me. So after Jessica stalked me and almost
had to get the restraining order against the only kidding,
(08:06):
only kidding, we became really close and Jessica's my girl,
and and we hung out and we get drinks or whatever,
and we became close friends on our own, and we
had this strange relationship with Anna where Anna only really
had Jessica and me and I wound up in this
(08:26):
very strange situation where I'm her criminal defense lawyer. I'm
kind of like her best friend. She didn't really have
anyone else. Everyone else was trying to take advantage of
her or use her to their advantage or an opportunist.
And Jessica and I and I truly believe this, and
I know it's true. You know, we both did care
about her, like she was a young girl in a
(08:48):
foreign city in jail, and I think that the public
doesn't appreciate that right, Like it's hard to realize what
that experience must have been like for her, not whether
she deserved it, not whether she's innocent and guilty, But
just imagine for a second if you had a loved
one who was young, never been in jail before, dropped
(09:09):
into a German city jail, no family there, and no
friends there, the friends you have are cooperating with the
police against you. Like that's a really horrible situation for anyone.
And she's my client. I have her back, and that's it,
Like there is nothing more to it than that I
signed up to represent her and I was going to
(09:30):
do the fucking best I can to help her in
all respects, and that's the position I took. So me
and Jessica both had that kind of feeling. We both
were connected to her, and we both shared a sense
of her life is in our hands to some degree,
And there was a lot of back and forth about
what's the right thing for her to do, and Anna
would confide in Jessica, and then Jessica would confide in me,
(09:52):
and then I would talk to Anna and then it's
like a little relationship. It was like a very strange dynamic.
And to talk about the scene in the show which
kind of kicks off the character of Todd's journey in
taking on the case in a very formal way, the
truckload of discovery that the DA sends over. I want
(10:12):
every piece of evidence you have by the end of
this week. Are you asking me to waive my ethical
responsibility to act with due diligence and the execution of
my prosecutorial professional responsibilities, everything, everything you're sure end of
the week? Was that real? Did you actually have a
truckload of boxes that was that were sent over to you?
(10:34):
So it wasn't a truckload, but it was an enormous
amount of discovery. These financial crimes cases are always document heavy,
so it didn't play out that way, but it did
play out with me and my paralegal dealing with this
voluminous amount of discovery in a very short period of time.
(10:54):
And we have a you know, a busy firm. There's
a lot of cases and a lot of things going on.
So it certainly was is overwhelming to start with, I
can tell you that. And how long of the period
did you have to review all these materials? I mean,
I want to say was maybe three months or something
like that to really spend the time and go through them.
And you know, I was here day in day out
(11:16):
just getting organized and understanding how the timeline played out
and all the fun interesting characters that were coming out
of the woodwork, like a fucking Lord of the Rings movie,
And yeah, it was an interesting ride. And on that note,
what was the most shocking or surprising thing that sort
of was revealed to you through this discovery? What really
(11:37):
stood out to you? I mean I kind of was
bewildered that all these super prominent influencers and doctors and
lawyers and architects and all these like really highbrow people
who are in the public eye just literally opened the
door for her and they didn't care whether what she
(11:58):
was saying was true or whether she really had these
resources or these connections. Like I don't want to just
reiterate my closing statement, but they really were blinded by
the glamor and glades, like they really were. I met
her for like five minutes in Brooklyn on the way
to a party, and I was like, okay, Shawty, Like
you definitely are not telling me the truth. Like, and
(12:19):
you know, I'm just a kid from Brooklyn, Like, how
are you gonna be a partner at all these white
shoe law firms and you're gonna be all these big
people and you're not gonna do any due diligence whatsoever.
And I don't want to disparage everyone involved, but I
think that everyone I was so excited about the opportunity
to work with the German errats, with Royalty, with the
(12:41):
blue blood, with someone from this high brow background, that
they just closed their eyes and they were willing to
do it end And I imagine that's what it's like
working with celebrities to some degree, Like that's the vibe
they must give you. Because everyone had the same story.
Everyone was like, I met her at this convention, I
met her at this art event, I met her on
a to fucking Warren Buffett, Stay, what are you going
(13:02):
to think when you're in that situation. Let's talk about
the framing of the case and your strategy. So you've
talked about this sort of Frank Sinatra fake it till
you make it idea that Anna was just doing her
thing and you know, throwing a wrench in the system.
But she's just a woman with a dream. Anna followed
suit and became the person she wanted to be, a
(13:25):
person who would receive the red carpet from New York's elite.
She allowed everyone to believe the story they wanted to believe.
It wasn't a crime when Sinatra did it. It isn't
a crime now. So I got this case, and now
I'm like, all right, we're going to trial. This ship
is about to be a war. And I knew off
(13:46):
the bat there was no scenario where she was beating
five of those charges. It was just she was dead
to right. So you would really resign yourself to that.
Early on, the idea that she was beating any of
these charges was so preposterous because it whole thing was
a fraud. It was totally bananas. Once I started going
through the evidence and I'm like, Okay, it's not her name,
(14:07):
it's not her bank account, this is not her passport,
she has no money, there's not a dollar to account.
What was it going to say to the jury, Oh,
it's a mistake. Like there were hard facts that you
had that were not on your side. So what I
had to do is I had to analyze the charges
and the elements and say, what story can I tell
the jury that is comprised of a lot of different
(14:29):
people from a lot of different backgrounds, some rich, some poor,
some fat, some skinny, some from Manhattan, some from somewhere else,
men versus women, all these things that would relate. And
I'm a big Frank Sinatra fan. Okay, my grandmother was
a big Frank Sinatra fan. She used to cut school
to see Sinatra. I've read like every biography. I love Sinatra.
On October eleven, Frank Sinatra opened the Paramount Theater and
(14:54):
Times Square women swooned at the side of all blue eyes.
They literally fed to the public. This was the Sinatra effect,
but in reality it was strategically created by Sinatra's press agents,
all because if he can make it here, he'll make
(15:15):
it anywhere. And why I thought it was fitting is
one people come to New York to make it. This
is a common theme, and everyone can respect that. Everyone
comes to New York City. It's a hard place to live,
it's expensive, and if you're here, you likely are a
ambitious motivated individuals. So one I wanted to paint the
(15:36):
picture that this was someone who was trying to get
something done. It's not like she was creating some sort
of Ponzi scheme. She actually had a plan to make
this foundation real. The other thing that I wanted to
get across is that a lot of people take shortcuts
to get things set up. And a really good example
(15:58):
of this now is like Banksy or Cause the artist,
or jay Z or any of these people that we
all think of now as these pillars of the community.
And you could spend five million dollars of Christie's buying
a piece. But that's not how it started, right. No
one gave a ship about jay Z when he was
selling Cracked. No one gave a ship about Cause when
(16:19):
he was in New Jersey doing pieces. And I love Cause,
and no one cared about Banksy either. And so for Anna,
if Anna had the right background, if if she went
to Harvard Business School and she had family money, and
she had summer houses in Greenwage or wherever, all those
doors would open for her. But she didn't have anything.
So just like Banksy, college jay Z, whoever, took some
(16:41):
shortcuts to get where they are, that's what she did.
She took some shortcuts. So I want a jury to
understand that this isn't revolutionary. There are precedents for this behavior.
This is puffery. People do this. Oh my god, invest
with me. I'm gonna make you a billion dollars. Oh,
I'm on Instagram. Here's my jet, here's this. You know,
people do this. And I knew that the only way
(17:01):
we had a chance was to separate the charges that
were impossible to be with the charges that were possible,
build credibility with the jurors, let them like me, let
them feel that I'm being honest with them, and they'd
follow my logic through and it worked. More from behind
the scenes of inventing Anna coming up after this, Welcome
(17:33):
back to everybody. Let's continue with the interview um. One
of the writers on the show, Matt Burne, was actually
present in the courtroom for the trial. That's my man,
that's my man. I love Matt, you know, Matt, good guy.
(17:55):
He recalls hearing you and Anna screaming at each other
from the other side of the wall. Okay, Anna, listen,
now you've funked up this entire trial. I know, with
your stupid long Island accent and your stupid faith that
you would be a useless piece of ships. Why Anna,
shut the funk up and listen. And I'm wondering, what
(18:17):
do you remember about what those arguments were about. Was
it about the clothing? Was it about her just sort
of disdainful behavior during the trial. I mean, I will
say this, I'll say one, anybody who is incarcerated on
trial is going through some next level horror show of
an experience. An Okay, you're waking up at four in
(18:38):
the morning, you don't have your clothes, you're not like
dressed apart, you don't feel good, your life is on
the line, like the whole ship is fucked up. It's really,
you know, a tremendous feeling of pressure and being overwhelmed.
So that's one. Two. Anna didn't necessarily understand that a
criminal trial is not the revenue to just explain your
(19:01):
business plans or to just say you're a good person.
A trial is almost like a mathematical formula, and you
have to attack the formula. You have to attack the
elements of the crime and to some degree, and it
didn't care if she won a loss. You know, she
wanted to get her story out there. Her position did
(19:24):
not jive with any trial strategy that would succeed, and
so there was turmoil about that and also breaking news
coming out of Lower Manhattan. And is pretty controlling. She's
not someone who's like cool, I'll just do it your way.
She seems very obstinate at times. Exactly, I'm taking the
(19:46):
stand too incompetent ape this entire defense, and you are
completely my reputation, your reputation, So I don't play that
particularly to trial, and I have to do what I
think is best for her to a large degree, Like
(20:06):
I'm not we're not friends, you know what I'm saying, Like,
we're not friends from the beginning. I'm your lawyer. I'm
here to protect you. And I've done a million of
these trials and you've done zero. And I don't give
a funk what you are worried about what people are
gonna say and see and da da da da da.
That's not my concern. My concern is getting to the
funk out of jail. And how did you feel about
(20:26):
the Instagram account about her trial style? Was that something
that you felt hurt her case? Anyone who's going on
trial for any criminal case is going to be concerned
with how they look, just like when you woke up today,
you were concerned with how you look, and I was
concerned with how I look. That's a natural feeling. Add
On that your life is on the line, and if
you lose the case, you're going to jail for potentially
(20:47):
twelve years. Of course you're going to be concerned. Add
On that I'm trying to convey a savvy young businesswoman.
Add On that the entire world is watching you every
step of the way, talking about it, tweeting about instagramming
about a journalist, of writing blah blah blah blah blah.
So you add on all of that, is anyone really
(21:08):
surprised that she was like, oh my god, I want
to wear a cool outfit. Like it's logical that she
wants to wear a cool outfit. The illogical part is
the execution of all that, the fucking fits and the
drama and the yelling and the back and forth and
not wearing the outfits. But I don't knock her for
wanting to look good. I do think that it did
(21:30):
not help her case with the judge for her to
make such a big deal about the clothes and delay things,
and Judge Kiso, who was presiding over it, is a
very fair good judge, but there's a limit. I'm gonna
sip this iced coffee, Mr Spodick, and when I'm finished,
if your client isn't dressed and before me, I'm going
(21:54):
to be wildly, deeply unhappy. Yes, and don't let the
jump most size boo you. I drink fast. She has
a courtroom to run, she's a trial to run. So
I think that anything that we would do that isn't necessary,
that's going to upset or disturb the judge is not
(22:16):
in your best interests because the judge is going to
sentence you eventually. Yes, that does make sense. The judge
getting upset was not the right choice for her, but
I understand why she wanted to look a certain way. Yeah,
I'd like to talk about the show a little bit.
There's a great scene going back to episode one where
the character of Todd is telling his wife that he
(22:37):
doesn't want to quote park cars for other people his
whole life. Even though I'm with Margaret Vanderburn, porter of
the New York Porters, and even though that tuxedo costs
more than some people making a month, Even then I
still feel like one of the Valet's mhm. Now come
back in Long Island and I'm parking cars to help
(22:58):
my mom pay the rent. I was wondering how much
of that sentiment resonated with you, and how much of
that idea is driving you in your own life. You know,
I didn't necessarily park cars, but I grew up, you know,
with a single mom in Brooklyn with my brother, and
certainly didn't come from means. It wasn't poverty, but it
(23:20):
wasn't a glamorous childhood by any stretch of the imagination.
And my wife, I grew up in Manhanan on the
Upper East Side, and you know, she's a little bit fancy,
and certainly there's that dichotomy in our relationship, right Like
I'm much more street quote unquote and she's much more proper.
I do have a little bit of me against the
(23:42):
world vibe, and I think that that's what they were
conveying to the audience. And I'm a criminal lawyer, like
it works with who I am, and I'm someone who
strongly believes like you own your own destiny, Like your
success or your failure is not dependent on anyone else,
It's on you, you make it happen. That's how my
mom raised me. And I think that conversation that they
(24:04):
portrayed is accurate. I don't think those words are exactly accurate,
but certainly what they feeling is accurate. And tell me
your overall thoughts on the show, how you are depicted,
how the law is depicted, and also the wonderful actor
who plays you, Arian Moya, and he did such a
fantastic job. Arian is the man. What are your overall
(24:25):
feelings about the way that the work you do is portrayed,
and any favorite scenes that stick out to you. Okay,
so I love the whole show. I loved it all.
I think Arian is fantastic. Is a handsome devil. He
is very handsome, yes, and I had the chance to
meet him and we certainly have plans to connect soon
and hang out. So I think they did great. You know,
(24:46):
I'm not a fucking movie critic, Like I'm not here
to be like, oh my god, they did this, they
did that so funny. It's like clients constantly like your
office like this or your house. I'm like, it's fucking Hollywood,
Like what did you think? Like, it's not that you
mentory that's not me. It's not me. You know, I'm
humbled by this experience. I'm grateful for being part of it.
(25:07):
I'm grateful for all the people that I worked with
and connected with. So I loved it. Um. I think
that he portrayed me accurately to a degree. I think
the context between me and my wife is a real thing.
And I think Jessica must have shared that with jan
Do or whoever else, and you know, that's a real thing,
and that's that's cool, that's who I am, Like, it
(25:27):
is what it is. I think that my kids being
involved in my life and big part of my life
is obviously true. Like my kids are my life. I
love my kids. And they're also like, oh my god,
we're on TV two, you know, like it's cool, like
we're all kind of cavelling over it. And um, as
far as the relationship between me and the prosecutor, you know,
(25:51):
hand DA's office is a powerful DA's office. There's a
lot of resources, a lot of people. They had a
fucking crew at trial, and yeah, I wanted to spank
this out of them. Of course I did, because that's
what a criminal lawyer wants to do. And I also
liked that it was just me against them. It made
me feel good about myself, like I don't need twenty
(26:11):
people here, I'll do this by myself. And you know
that when when you say that, it sounds so much
like something Anna herself would say. And do you think
that's how you connected emotionally with her? Anna is admirable
in a lot of ways. I don't condone criminality, That's
not what I do. But I like hustle, and I
like people who get ship done. And if you had
(26:33):
to plan like our bossle, let's just say, do you
think Anna could achieve it? You know she could achieve it, right,
But there are some people out there that you know,
they can't even make it to dinner on time, they
can't plan anything. So to me, I'm impressed by Anna,
and I'm impressed that she did it. I don't know
in another fucking country, Like can you imagine if you
(26:53):
dropped me off to fucking Germany right now? It was like,
all right, Todd, like set up some private solo house
type organization like that be impossible. So whether she took
shortcuts committed crimes, still everyone's money. The fact is that
she she actually made progress to getting it done, and
she did it on her own, and I liked I
(27:13):
liked her, and I like that vibe and I saw
some of it in me too. And do you have
any mementos from working with her or the trial or
anything that you'll keep as a keepsake if you will, yes. So,
you know, you do these trials, and I've done a
lot of trials, and sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes
it does, but it's rare that the clients are appreciative.
(27:36):
It's just the reality of this business, right because if
you win and you still go to jail, you're still upset.
So after the trial, Anna wrote me a handwritten thank
you know that I saved and it's actually in my
office over there. And I appreciate that, even in the
dark times for her, right even though she lost some
(27:58):
of the counts and she was going to be in
jail and she was going to be deported, you know,
she took the time to be like, godd, I really
appreciate everything, and I'm really grateful and I'm humbled by it.
You know, she didn't have to do that, and I
thought that was really nice, and she's a decent person,
you know. And then my final question for you, is
the show really lays out this idea that Anna Sirokan
(28:20):
and Anna Delby are, in essence, two different people. One
could be sort of more of a fabricated version of
the other. Do you see them as distinct have the
same hole, and do they feel different to you as people?
I would say that there's the outside Anna, right, Anna
that communicates with the world, and that's someone who wants
(28:41):
to be viewed a certain way, right, And that's like
the tough, ambitious entrepreneur I don't give a fuck, like
I'm gonna make it happen. And that's one side of her, right,
and that is the Anna Delvy person. And then there's
the side that I got to know. And this sounds cheesy,
Like I get that this sounds cheesy, but like I
saw her at the lowest and when it was just
(29:03):
me and her, and where's moments of intimacy where she
was Anna Surkin, the real person, And she was a young,
frightened girl on Riker's Island, and she was crying to
me and she was like, you have to help me.
And I tried to. I certainly tried to. And everyone
(29:24):
in this world is like multifaceted right, Like nobody could
be defined by one thing, and certainly someone as complex
as Anna. The public has to realize is that there
are many aspects of her and you're watching a fictionalized
Netflix show like that's not the real person. Um. I
don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing,
(29:45):
but I definitely did see a side of her that
other people did well. Todd, we really do appreciate your time.
You really have brought such a new level of understanding
to this complex case and also to your work, And
really thank you for your time. We really appreciate it. Yeah,
I'm happy to be part of it. If you need
anything on me, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back
(30:06):
with Shonda Land writer Matt Byrne, who attended Anna's trial
and wrote the series finale. And we are back with
(30:26):
writer Matt Burne. Before we talk about inventing Anna, I
do want to acknowledge that you have a background in journalism,
as do I, and I want us to talk about, firstly,
how you make the transition from our in the trenches
job as a journalist and what is it like to
(30:49):
become a TV writer. What did the two disciplines have
in common? Oh, boy. Um, the transitions are kind of
a long story. I was kind of forced into it
in a way. I sort of tried switched careers. I
was producing news for CNN throughout my twenties, which was
an amazing experience all in all, and took me all
over the world and and took me behind the scenes
(31:09):
of power and but it really wasn't my calling. And
so I switched careers and came out to USC and
did their producing program. I immediately after taking a stab
at a script, knew that I had to just kind
of re engineer that program to become a writer. That's
the quick story on how I transition. I started hustling
(31:30):
for jobs, and I was a researcher for the writers
of Grey's Anatomy, so learned how like a writer's room
works there and and sorry, what was the second part
of your question, Stacy? I was just curious what the
two disciplines have in common that you notice in terms
of overlap the way a newsroom works versus the way
a writer's room works. People are a lot nicer in
(31:50):
a writer's room. That's good to know. I understand the
pressure cooker vibe of news is yeah, people are a
lot nicer in Hollywood than there in d C. So
inventing Anna, and in talking to Shonda and Jessica Pressler
and a lot of your colleagues, we have really sinsed
this kind of magical hybrid of a story based on
(32:10):
true events but also creative license. So I'd love for
you to walk me through what your experience was working
with Shonda in the writer's room to map out this series.
Why not tell it in a linear fashion versus the
way that you did time jumps You sort of devoted
an episode to each character. Walk me through those decisions.
I think, yes, it's a true story, but with a
(32:32):
completely unreliable narrator. So I wouldn't say it forced our hand,
but it certainly made it more interesting to tell everyone
else's experience with Anna versus trying to sort of chronicle
her narrative directly, because it's full of manipulation lies. There
are a few holes in her story, right, Yeah. And
(32:53):
also what was fascinating is that each of them sort
of met a different Anna and had a different experience
with her, And I think some of that seemed to
our sense to be projected upon her by those individuals,
And what maybe what they needed and what they wanted.
And and also because Anna considered turn a corner and
be a different person with a different person in order
(33:15):
to get what she needs. So we have this rich
world that Jessica Pressler gave us outside of Anna herself,
all these characters who chronicle they're very specific experience with Anna,
and that kind of help dictate the narrative style in
a way. It's amazing, And you referenced Jessica's incredible story
and her reporting and the words that come to me
(33:38):
with with that our world building. She created this incredible
world in which Anna was just one of the characters.
Tell me how you use Jessica's article as a blueprint. Yeah. God,
she gave us so much good material. I think, so
many great characters and stories, but you know they're also
a lot of holes around the sort of wise and
(33:59):
how so that's where we stepped in and it felt
like in terms of what we added, you know, a
lot of it was the direct interpersonal relationships and what
each character experienced with Hannah beyond the sort of facts
of it all, but the emotional story because we had
(34:20):
these sort of puzzle pieces of a story, it was
sort of gave us the freedom to go down different
avenues of what if this was the reason why this happened,
or what if? You know. I think really what we
focused on in terms of trying to fill in the
gaps most of all, really was Annah's story. Just the
(34:43):
simple question of like was she gonna take off with
that twenty million dollars from the banks or was she
going to pour it into this foundation? You know what
I mean? Like I still don't know the answer that question.
No one knows the answer to that question, you know.
So that right in there of its self gave us
license to sort of ask the questions we want to
(35:04):
ask through these characters, narratives and posts impossible decision making
behind her behavior, and then allow for the audience to
reject or inject their own feelings about that. And you
did exhaustive research as a room, as a production, in
terms of interviewing the real life people, legal documents. As
(35:27):
a former journalist, you probably also kind of felt like
you were putting a story together, right. You're compiling all
your sourcing, You're vetting accounts of events. I would love
to know what was your favorite or shocking discovery. I
think Anna, the character says this in the story in
the last scene, but it's how willing she was to
(35:48):
withstand the sort of pressures of making people uncomfortable to
get what she wants. You don't deserve this kind of
a sentence. Mistakes were made was to overestimate people's ability
to handle stress. Beyond the pages of Jessica's story and
the and all the research that we did, it was
(36:09):
witnessing her in person. I think was was the most
shocking thing of how brazen and delightful she is. At
the same time, Wow, and we're going to do a
deep dive into the trial and your experiences uh being
present for that incredible event. I want to make time
for us to discuss your incredible work. On episode two,
the Double War, Anna, tell me a little bit about
(36:30):
the characters of Chase and Vowel and why they are
specifically important in this episode. To open up Anna for
the viewer. You know, I think it's about that period
of time where you're trying to find yourself as in
your mid twenties, and it's also having true friends. I
think this is in Vale that the potentially last real
(36:53):
true friendship without any ties, without any quick quote, you know,
just like someone who loved her, and she loved back
in a genuine way and they were real pals. And
then so you know, she's kind of playing with this
character of herself, with Theanna Delvi of it all. I
don't think she's really found it yet. In this episode.
It's almost like an outfit she's trying on in a
(37:14):
way exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like she's sort of
strutting it around and trying out different things and she
has no direction yet. And then once she does, it's
sort of the the sacrifice that's involved for her in
having to make that decision to ditch the one person
who loves you for who you are, maybe more than anything,
(37:35):
because Chase is not that person. It's well, you know,
and so there's a lot of heartbreak in that, I think,
and the sort of disorienting nature of not knowing why
you're ditched by your very best friend. I mean, that's
just one of those weird things that can happen in
life where you have these relationships at end and you
still process them for years, I think, and you don't
(37:58):
really have answers, you know, just an outcome of and
a sort of sacrifice that Anna has to make in
order to protect her anonymity as she explores her true passion,
and that's sort of what we tried to explore most
of all in this episode. I think that comes through
and you do see it's sort of sort of the
collateral damage of all of that kind of mountain in
(38:21):
this episode. It's really well done. So now let's jump
to ending the show. Let's talk about the endpoint for
the narrative and how you're balancing your plans with this
trial with this real life. You know, there's still this
organic story that keeps going and going and going. Right. Yeah,
it felt like the trial was ended up being the
(38:43):
right endpoint because it was sort of the culmination of
for everyone's characters having to make decisions about how they
felt about Anna, which I said, Team Anna, Is this
a team Rachel? Yeah, I'm Switzerland in all this whether
or not they're going to support Anna and to what
(39:05):
extent and what they need Anna for and especially for
Todd specifically and what he projects onto Anna for his
own needs. And I think there's a lot of that,
a lot of talk of Anna's father in that last episode,
and I think when I look at that, I'm like, really,
that's all more important to Todd than it is to Anna.
(39:25):
You know, it's interesting, like what he thinks she needs
and and well he is like a father figure to
her too in a sense, or he's trying to guide
her in a kind almost fatherly way, but he just
keeps butting up against her obstinates. Yeah, but does she
need that or does he need that? Does she see
that he needs to be that part? And so plays
you know, the sort of difficult but charming daughtering sort
(39:48):
of going back and forth, and also just helps the
overall question of Anna too is like is she this
sort of innocent kid who tried to do something big
or is she a completely manipulative little monster for lack
of a correct psychological term for her, you know what
I mean, Like that's the question this series. And so
(40:10):
I think the trial helps all of us and the characters,
especially Delvin, and try and answer that question for ourselves.
And in speaking of Todd, of course this her attorney
tell me about crafting him for the screen, because you
also had access to him in real life. He's quite
a character and I'm wondering how you balanced the real Todd,
who was very willing to talk with you and was
(40:30):
very open and suring his experiences with the Todd that
we see on screen, and what do they have in common.
We'll start with what they don't have in common, which
is that the Todd we see on screen curses less,
and he curses a lot on screen. And he's a
very very funny person and loyal and sharp and and
a very good attorney. Part of that is just the
(40:52):
great job Arean did with the character and the sort
of policy over here and Shonda Landa's we write the
words and we don't tell the actors how to play them.
And so I love what he did. I think it's
different than Todd, but it's very I think, soulful and
smart and really accurate to the spirit of Todd. And
(41:13):
so I love seeing that. I love putting something on
the page and sort of approximating a person and feeling
in your own feelings about it. But then you hand
it over to an actor and they do their own thing.
And it's been a joy on this show throughout. Yeah,
and Todd really does seem to care, you know, while
he enjoys some of the limelight, and you know, this
is kind of a a milestone event for his career,
(41:36):
he really does ultimately care about her, and I think
that does come through. He really does, and I felt
that when I hung out with him at the trial
entirely even as sort of abusive, truly abusive towards him,
and it could be We talked to the jury after
the trial as well. We kind of spread out and
tried to talk to jurors, some of the journalists and
I and they talked about how they could hear them
(42:00):
fighting through the walls, like as they were, yeah, in
their jury holding room waiting for Todd and Anna to
come out so they could start the trial. They would
hear them screaming at each other, Oh my goodness, almost
like family members. Yeah. Yeah, but he I think, you know,
he's Todd is very charmed by her as well, and
(42:20):
you know, it keeps it professional, is it's not a
familial relationship at all, but continues to this very moment
to support her and be an ear for her and
look out for her, which is beyond his call of duty.
So Matt, I would love to hear some details about
what it was like to be at the trial in
the courtroom and witness sing all of this sort of
(42:43):
circus like beer and the tone, the energy, what was
the vibe being there? It was chaos. Honestly at the beginning.
Everything that happened in the episode is true. That she
would not come out, which felt so crazy to me.
And then like not many people there maybe two journalists
and a few photographers and three or four other people
(43:04):
kind of thing. So it was it was very empty,
which was surprising to me too, because I thought there'd
be tons of interest in this case. I remember thinking like, oh,
I'll have to get tickets or you know, no, no
one showed up. This is not a gut start for
our team. I'm very underwoned without proparation. On day one,
we have to go. No, don't crowd my entrance. My
(43:30):
first impressions were that Todd was completely like being incompetent
to be frank, I just didn't know this character well
enough at this point. I didn't know that what she
was capable of, that anyone could be that obstinate that
like she's going to hold up her own trial self sabotage. Really,
it just felt completely insane to me. This whole business
(43:53):
with the clothes felt completely self destructive and crazy at
the time, and so I, I, you know, wrongfully immediately
kind of blame the attorney for not be able to
handle his client a little bit, and so he just
felt like he was flailing, which he was at the
moment watching this literally running down the you know, exchanging
of bags of clothes and just to get the trial started. Uh,
(44:19):
I was sort of blown away. And then and then
the opening statements began at Todd's brilliant every person that
walks in here and sits in that chair wanted to
give Anna money because they wanted to be in business
with her, to be close to Anna Delvy, the German heiress.
(44:40):
Would they have wanted to be in business with Anna Sorkin,
a middle class foreigner. No, Anna had to fake it
until she made it. Think youn hear a pin drop.
The entire jury is laughing where they need to laugh,
and nodding where they need to not. And East owns
the room in a way that I felt throughout my
(45:03):
body was incredible. Within an hour or two, he had
completely changed my impression of him or and then just
the weird thing of like Anna would do this thing
where she I think because Jessica had told her who
I was, so she did know who you were. She
didn't know my name but she knew that I was
(45:23):
like a representative of this project, and so she would
kind of turn around and give me these looks like
pouty or flirty or someone like all of these different looks,
and she was sort of trying to look engage a
response for me, almost like she was like writing the
(45:44):
character for you, for you to take notes. Yeah, you know.
And what I found out later was because she asked Jessica,
she said, I know how the jury feels about me.
That's part of her gift is sort of being able
to read emotions and read a room. But I don't
know how she called me Rosy Cheeks. I don't know
how Rosy Cheeks feels about me for Rosy Cheeks. So
(46:09):
I felt good about that because my journalism trading of
just I just kind of gave nothing back. So it's
fascinating to witness her try on these different faces in
order to get a response from me and try and
engage in a way that told me so much about
her character, and then realizing that all of those emotions
were faked in order to try and get inside my
(46:32):
head and figure out which methodology she might be able
to use emotionally doing engage with with me and as
we of course come to learn about Anna in the series,
the worst thing that someone can do to her is
ignore her, right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I just extinctively kind
of just didn't I want to engage in any form.
You know. It's the whole journalist thing of just not
(46:53):
being part of the story too. That's my training, and
so that was what I tried to do. The best
was just witnessed. At what point did you find out
about the Instagram account? Was it when the trial was
going on that people were sort of buzzing about that.
We found out about the incident account when the trial
was going on, and literally watched more people start to
show up to the trial too, and and it sort
(47:16):
of fed into media interests as well. And so it
was a move on her part. It was a move,
that's for sure. I did want to ask there's a
really scary bailiff in the show where she screams at
everyone to sit down. Let's bring in the jury. Everybody
sit down now? Was that based in reality? What did
(47:41):
they really have to wrangle people that intensely to get
them to behave and be quiet? Yeah? In fact, I
kept asking the director to tell her to go even
bigger with it because it was yeah and then and
the actor did a terrific job with it, but it
was even it was even louder in real life, and
the judge was as sweet and direct and funny and
sort of in control of the proceedings. Are actor did
(48:05):
a wonderful job of capturing that. So and tell me
just in terms of timeline when the trial took place
versus where you were in production or in the writer's
room at that point, and how those two concurrent timelines
interacted with each other. We were very early stages of
writing when the trial was taking place, and so we
had really great stuff from Jessica Pressler. It felt like
(48:26):
we have a whole world, but we don't know what happened.
So I'm glad that we were able to wait for
that trial in order to write this because it informs
so much, and it really informed a lot of what
we did, and then we sort of backed into it.
I see. So it's almost as if the finale took
shape and then you retroactively crafted your ark for the show. Yeah,
(48:49):
pretty much. Yeah, I wouldn't say that it was that
direct of a process, but sure, yeah, let's and there's
a great scene that I loved where Vivian is slacking
her colleagues the verdicts as they come down, and I
hear you were actually doing that with your colleagues as well.
Is that true? Yes? I was trying to include them
(49:09):
as much as possible, So yes, I was slacking them
live as the verdict was coming down. Yeah. And then
Shawnda asked me to put that in the show. Right, Well,
you were the correspondent, right, I was the correspondent reporting
live from the scene. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. One amazing experience
was they rebuilt the court room exactly how it was,
(49:30):
so I don't know if that ever influences the actors
at all, but it felt so real, you know, just
kind of a dirty New York courtroom, and that in
and of itself was really strange to be shooting and
what felt like the actual courtroom. Right, And I'd love
to talk about the final scene between Vivian and Anna. Yeah,
(49:53):
I'm I just wanted to say I'm sorry for how
everything turned out. For all of this, I thought you
thought what I know, you didn't think you were going
to rescue me, and I've no touching. Tell me how
(50:14):
you crafted that moment. Tell me about your intentions and
what were your hopes for tying the story up. I
think the whole question of the series from Vivian's perspective,
is is there anything behind this the artifice of Anna
Delve The hope of that scene is to really get
to the core of that, or to help the audience
(50:37):
sort of ask and answer the question for themselves. Shanda
and I went back and forth a lot on the
scene and worked on this scene together because they really
did have to sort of address some major stuff for us.
I think what we found is that we're at the
end of this series, but do we really have an
answer for who Anna Delvi is and whether or not
(50:59):
everything is trans actional? And given that Vivian so gotten
so emotionally invested, feeling overly emotionally invested, that feeling of
like have I done that to a charlatan or somebody
who's incapable of emotional investment? Like and is there a
little bit of Anna in me? Like did I take
(51:19):
advantage of a situation to my own benefit but hurt
the other party involved in the same way that you
could say that Anna Delvi did with Rachel? And that
what has become of me? But I think really at
the course, like is this person a person? And then
from Anna's perspectives, just like do I need people or
is everything just situational? And I can toss them aside.
(51:45):
I don't like you. You have terrible shoes. This was
a transaction. We had to deal. Yeah, No, it's okay.
You might good on your part with the deal. You
said to the famous and you did no touching. You'll
come visit. No touching, you'll come visit. When something has
(52:09):
a fine point, like the end of Lost or the
end of Breaking Bad, you can debate the merit of
how they ended the show, but there isn't like that
discussion possibility after the fact, whereas here it's this is
a moral debate. Yeah, and and we are just really
trying to say, here's what confused and fascinated us, and
here's what we think could have happened, and here's what
(52:30):
we imagine is through these real people's lives, like how
you would feel and what you would do. So that
for us was really the most important thing, was to
sort of give people something to dive into themselves and
and answer for themselves from their own experience. So you're
glad you made the lead from journalism to TV writer,
never gone back. Well, thank you so much, Matt. This
(52:52):
has been incredible and such a learning experience for anyone
who's watched the show to hear even just a glimpse
of how it was put together. It's really fantastic. So
think you so much. So nice talking to you, Stacy.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining
us for Inventing Anna the official podcast. I hope we've
(53:14):
quenched some of your thirst for Anna delby and giving
you juicy details about the making of this intriguing series.
If you're new to this podcast, there are actually hours
and hours of Inventing Anna content to enjoy, including interviews
with the real people portrayed in the show, conversations with
cast members, insights from creator Shaunda Rhymes, and so much more.
(53:35):
It's been a total blast being your guide on this
wild tour behind the scenes of Inventing Anna. Thank you
so much for having me. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
please leave us a rate or review, share, subscribe like
all of that good stuff. And if you haven't finished
watching Shawna Lands Inventing Anna on Netflix, I recommend you
(53:58):
go do that. Inventing Anna. The Official podcast is executive
produced by Sandy Bailey, Lauren Homan, Tyler Clang, and Gabrielle Collins.
Our producer and editor is Nicholas Harder, and the show
is produced and hosted by me Stacy Wilson Hunt. Inventing Anna.
(54:23):
The Official Podcast is a production of Schondeland Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Schondeland Audio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.