They say crime doesn’t pay, but Anna Delvey does it really well. She sold her story to Netflix, whipped his drawings from prisonminted NFTs that offer holders exclusive accessand just started a podcast: The Anna Delvey Show with recorded episodes inside his East Village apartment where she is under house arrest.
The show’s premise is brazen and bold, which is to be expected from someone who has scammed socialites, glitzy hotels, and banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Now you meet the real me,” she proclaims at the start of each episode. “I dive into the concept of rules and the people who make and break them,” she continues in a seemingly appropriate accompanying jingle from a low-rent infomercial.
Unsurprisingly, Delvey (née Sorokin) doesn’t keep any of her promises.
Delvey’s candid conversations with his guests don’t elucidate the how and why of his legendary downsides. They do, however, offer false details about his worldview. We learn that she envisions an ideal funeral, the fact that she will definitely freeze her eggs, and her belief that being in prison is like going to a big boarding school.
So far, guests on The Anna Delvey Show included actor Whitney Cummings, musician Julia Cumming and artist and writer Kenny Schachter. The podcast promises future encounters with the likes of NFT evangelist Paris Hilton, playwright Jeremy O. Harris and pharmaceutical brother Martin Shkreli.
A performance for “Allegedly” was held in May at the Lower East Side Public Hall. Photo courtesy of Founders Art Club.
For the most part, Delvey asks his subjects questions and then lets them do the talking. There are three types of Delvey questions: the basic, “have you ever been arrested?” trotted out in every episode; the banal, “Have you ever thought about going blonde? that she asks Cummings; and the pseudo-intellectual, “how is class perceived in the music industry? which she puts to cumming.
Much public and media attention has been given to Delvey’s untraceable accent – who Cummings describes as “the wicked killer” – but the real star here is his laugh. It looks like a squirrel experiencing unimaginable distress and great pleasure simultaneously. It happens so frequently over the hour-long episodes that we begin to wonder precisely what Delvey finds so funny. The answer may well be us, the listener, to begin with.
This leads to the inevitable question: does Delvey’s podcast violate the son of sam law, by what is it forbidden for criminals to profit from writings or broadcasts about their crimes? It’s one that has happened with every new Delvey venture and indeed New York State froze Sorokin’s funds in 2019, before unfreezing them in 2020 so she could pay off her debts.
Admittedly, Delvey seems aware of the danger, given the reluctance with which she discusses her criminal acts on the podcast, although she is extremely eager to joke and speak out about life in prison. Clearly, the podcast’s producer, Audio Up, believes it has a solid legal foundation – and he would also know he created the “Mea Culpa” podcast for former Donald Trump fixer Michael Cohen.
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