Meet the real Vivian Kent from Inventing Anna: Jessica Pressler is the inspiration behind the Netfli

Massachusetts native Pressley is no stranger to fame. In her decade-long career, she has written compelling exposés and feature articles for prestigious publications like New York Magazine, GQ and Elle.

But she is undoubtedly becoming more famous – Netflix said its users streamed 77.3 million hours of Inventing Anna in the first week of its release.

Here we take a look at her fascinating life, her involvement in the series and how she was once conned by a high school student.

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Her story inspired Jennifer Lopez’s Hustlers

Before Inventing Anna, there was Hustlers. Pressler reported the fascinating story of a group of exotic dancers who conned rich men in her 2015 New York Magazine article “The Hustlers at Scores”, which was later turned into Jennifer Lopez’s critically acclaimed 2019 film.

Her article was nominated for the National Magazine Award in 2016 and she ended up being portrayed by Julia Stiles on screen. “Early on, I kept thinking the character would get cut, because my impression was that journalist characters are not sexy,” she told The Los Angeles Times. “There’s no typing, which I think is a very good choice,” she added.

Pressler is still friends in real life with the ex-dancer Roselyn Keo, the basis for the role of Destiny played by Constance Wu in the film.

A photographer told her about Anna Sorokin

While she was reporting the story of what would become Hustlers, Pressler was tipped off about Sorokin by a court photographer named Steven Hirsch. “Do you know other ones [female con artists], because I was thinking about maybe doing a book project on it. Have you seen any new, interesting, fun things lately?” she asked Hirsch, as she told Vox’s Recode Media with Peter Kafka podcast in 2018.

Pressler is not sure where she stands on the real Sorokin. “I really have not landed on whether she’s brilliant, conniving, or if she just kind of happens to be in the right place at the right time and has a little bit more tolerance of uncomfortable situations,” she told the Shondaland website.

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Pressler’s other articles have focused on Hollywood celebrities (Alec Baldwin, Channing Tatum, Cynthia Nixon), Silicon Valley CEOs and influential people – such as fashion designer Tory Burch or her 2011 piece with New York City socialite Lynn Tilton.

She was “scolded’ by Shonda Rhimes with an iconic reply

People are obsessed with the Shonda Rhimes-produced Netflix series for its tantalising story, but not everything happened the same way in real life. For starters, yes, Pressler was eight months pregnant when she wrote the article, but she didn’t actually go into labour as she finished the exposé.

“It’s so much more dramatic because it’s a TV show, but the arc of the feelings that I had reporting the story, the feelings I had about journalism being complicated and whether this is an exploitative job – that is stuff I was thinking about,” she told Vulture recently.

After she gave birth to her newborn, Pressler didn’t check her emails – as it turned out, Rhimes had emailed her asking to develop the story.

“I was running on a treadmill when I read the article in New York Magazine about Anna Delvey, and I remember literally jumping off of the treadmill and calling my office,” said Rhimes in an interview, but she didn’t get a reply until a month or so later. Realising the error, Pressler apologised to the Hollywood producer only to receive a “scolding” that left Pressler absolutely smitten.

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“Don’t ever apologise for the work of being a woman and a mother. If you were a man, people would be putting you on the cover of Time magazine for taking care of kids and doing any work at all at the same time,” Pressley recalled of the iconic email reply, adding that she had it framed.

She was once conned by a high school student

Mirroring real life, Inventing Anna showed how Vivian Kent ran a false story on a kid named Donovan Lamb who claimed to have made millions, before admitting that he lied. But the show changed a few details. In real life, Pressler did report on a high school student – a senior at Stuyvesant High School named Mohammed Islam – who claimed to have made US$72 million investing in stocks on his lunch break, which turned out to be a hoax.

He then admitted in an interview with The Observer that he gave Pressler the false information just to impress her. Due to the blunder, Bloomberg News rescinded their job offer to Pressler and The New York Post had to run an apology to its readers (but Pressler’s editors stood by her and took full responsibility).

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After Inventing Anna came out, Pressler told Vulture that she didn’t bring up the story to Rhimes initially as it was already on the internet, but she understood why they included the story arc. “I get that there’s this parallel in that you’re writing about a con artist and then appear to have been conned,” she said.

Her real-life husband is also a writer

On the show, while Kent is hell-bent on pursuing the Sorokin story, her supportive husband is always seen by her side (played by Anders Holm). In real life, Pressler married author and writer Benjamin Wallace in 2008, according to The New York Times. The publication stated that the couple were married at the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Philadelphia and that Wallace is a freelance magazine writer and author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.

Pressler graduated magna cum laude from Temple University and is currently a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, per her LinkedIn page. On social media, she has over 24,000 followers on Instagram at the time of writing – and, yes, she is followed by the real Anna Delvey.

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