Netflix has grown to be a pretty formidable player in the streaming landscape, with its original movies and television shows often becoming pop-culture phenomenons. That proved to be the case with one of its newest limited series, which provided a ripped-from-the-headlines story that appears to have gotten a lot of attention. The Nielsen ratings for the week of February 14th through February 20th reveal that Inventing Anna, Netflix and Shondaland’s fictionalized take on the real-life Anna Delvey scandal, was the most-watched show upon the week of its debut.
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The series’ nine episodes were viewed a total of 3.283 billion minutes in that week along, performing massively ahead of other hits like fellow Netflix series Ozark, which fell to the #3 spot with 1.083 billion minutes viewed that week. Amazon Prime Video’s Reacher ended up at the #4 spot with 935 million minutes viewed that week.
In Inventing Anna, a journalist with a lot to prove investigates the case of Anna Delvey, the Instagram-legendary German heiress who stole the hearts of New York’s social scene – and stole their money as well. The series stars Julia Garner as Delvey, with Anna Chlumsky as Vivian Kent, Arian Moayed as Todd Spodek, Katie Lowes as Rachel Williams, Alexis Floyd as Neff Davis, and Laverne Cox as Kacy Duke. The series is based around Jessica Pressler’s reporting on Delvey’s real-life scandal.
“It was really surreal,” Garner told Elle of meeting the real-life Delvey. “She’s very funny, when you meet her in real life, and so I knew there had to be that comedic aspect to the show. Very funny, very likable, and she wanted to talk, as much as she was able to. But I also still don’t think that she thinks she did anything wrong. I think she just wanted power, and prestige, and success, and she was still thinking like that. It seemed like her perspective was still that she didn’t do anything wrong, that she was just doing everything it took to get to where she should be. I don’t think she sees a difference between being hungry, and being ambitious.”
“I think Anna had a dream, and I think she believed in her dream, and when you have someone that believes that strongly in something, other people start to believe it too,” Garner said elsewhere in the interview. “Even if she knew deep down that it was not real, I think there was a degree that she definitely believed in it. That’s why it’s so believable to other people. I also think she had a deep, deep fear of failure. She really did not want to fail, and behind the fear of failure is a deep fear of rejection, and behind the fear of rejection is somebody that’s struggling with their identity, because they’re not okay with who they are. And I don’t think Anna was okay with who she was.”
What do you think of Inventing Anna topping the Nielsen ratings for mid-February? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
