Too Rich for Her Blood

 is the eighth episode of Inventing Anna.

Short Summary
Vivian digs into lingering questions after her article's publication, including Anna's formative years in Germany and her stay at L.A.'s Chateau Marmont.

Full Summary
Vivian and Jack look down at Vivian's article. She says it's late, but he thinks it's great. She wrote a great article while pregnant. Now they have a new girl to obsess over.

Vivian's article comes out. Alan Reed watches a news report about Anna. Two vloggers from Buzzfeed dream-cast the Anna Delvey story.

Chase watches the Buzzfeed video on his iPad and is upset when they cast Michael Cera as him.

A news anchor interviews and influencer who is adamant that Anna wouldn't have fooled her or her friends.

Neff sees Anna's face on a billboard and tells a total stranger that that's her girl.

Vivian holds a copy of the magazine with her article as she waits at Rikers to see Anna. When the guard calls Sorokin, many people in the room rush to the guard's desk, including one who tries to flatter the guard, but Vivian is the only one allowed back.

Anna knows she's famous.

Vivian shows Anna the article and Anna eagerly takes the magazine and starts reading. When Anna finishes, she says she thought Vivian was a real journalist. Vivian says she put hundreds of hours and months of work into the article. Anna says if the people around her had done what they were told, things would have come together and she'd have been able to start ADF. Vivian made it sound like she made everything up. Vivian says she did lie. There never was a trust fund. Her dad has a small trucking business. Legal confirmed it for the article. Vivian tells Anna to look around and stop pretending. Anna tries to pretend that her Russian father might have secrets to hide. Vivian asks why Anna did what she did in LA at the Chateau Marmont if she was so sure the money would come through. Anna denies knowing what she's talking about. The guard comes over to tell Vivian her time is up. Anna's upset that Vivian doesn't know anything about her after all that work. The guard notices Vivian's had her baby and congratulates her.

Anna?

Anna exits the airport in LA. As she takes a picture, she gets a text from Rachel saying she doesn't know how she's going to pay her rent and one from Todd telling her to call him immediately. Anna gets in a cab and has the cabbie take her to Chateau Marmont. He starts chatting as they drive, so she gives him money to be quiet. Anna looks at her texts and sees a message from Todd that Judge Kiesel is angry she missed her arraignment. She doesn't reply.

Jack's excited that it's been two months since the article came out and it's still making waves. Vivian feels like everyone missed the real story, which was something about class. She's not entirely sure herself. She blames herself, saying she never found the real story. Jack says whatever story she found, it worked.

Vivian tells her daughter Anna's story as she enters the library. She sees a twenty something girl wearing a "Fake German Heiress" shirt. The girl explains that it's a meme.

Vivian reads a book of Russian history to her baby.

The bellhop shows Anna to the penthouse. She goes out to the balcony and enjoys the view. It's almost to her satisfaction. She asks him for a bottle of rosé.

Rachel asks McCaw if she's seen Anna's social media. She's in LA at the Chateau Marmont. She wants McCaw to send someone to arrest her, but McCaw can't do that. There are millions of outstanding bench warrants country-wide. Rachel's upset that it seems like Anna's going to get away with it. McCaw says Anna's case isn't her highest priority right now. She has other cases. McCaw does tell her that Anna may have stolen from some banks. They've kept it quiet because it'll embarrass powerful people, but they're looking into it. Rachel's not alone and they're not ignoring what happened to her. She just has to wait for the grand jury.

Vivian meets with Landon and Paul. Her article was their best-performing piece in five years. They're very excited. Everyone wants to know what's next for her. Vivian knows what she wants to do next.

Vivian puts her daughter to bed. Jack's shocked that she's planning to go to Germany. She needs to know if Anna really is an heiress. The story could be bigger than Anna. The timing is bad. She doesn't want to leave her baby, but everything is arranged. The magazine paid for everything for her. It's only for a week. She feels she has to as a journalist. Jack thinks she's gotten too close to Anna, whom he believes is a sociopath. Vivian says she's not a sociopath. She knows because of what happened at the Chateau Marmont. There's more to the story and she has to go find it. She continues packing.

Anna drinks in her hotel room and takes some pills. As she's taking a selfie, she gets and ignores texts from Rachel and Neff. She takes more pills and drinks more. She gets more texts asking her about money. She throws her phone in anger. She picks it up to see the screen is cracked. She drinks the rest of the bottle and then passes out on the floor.

Young Anna walks through an airport in Germany. An officer stops her and she says she's there to meet her dad. He asks her to open her bag, but it's locked and she doesn't know the combination. He cuts the bag open and money comes out. Two men in suits approach. They give the officer some of the money and take the rest and Anna with them to go to her father.

Vivian stands in the same airport, holding a notepad with a timeline of Anna's time in Germany. A woman approaches and introduces herself as Mira, the translator. Vivian says she was just daydreaming about Anna coming to Germany by herself. Mira's been imagining the same things herself. She's a fan of Vivian's article. She's in journalism school herself and all her classmates were emailing each other about it. Competition to be her translator was fierce.

Anna wakes up in the hospital. Andrew Millikan notices she's awake and enters her room. He asks her some questions to test her orientation. He's the attending psychiatrist for Cedars Sinai Hospital and she was found unconscious next to an empty bottle of Xanax. Anna says she was just stressed and wanted to sleep. They had to resuscitate her and she was on a respirator for a while. Anna tries to get up and leave, but he says she's on a 5150 hold and he has to evaluate her. She still tries to leave until he tells her if she persists, he'll have to call law enforcement. He starts the evaluation.

On the train, Vivian shows Mira some pictures and tells her what she knows about Anna's parents. Vivian's not sure she's buying Vadim's story about his business, because Anna lived so lavishly after leaving Germany. A trucker couldn't pay for that. Plus the home Anna lived in is extravagant. Vivian switches her pump to her other breast and says she thinks recent Russian history is relevant. She talks about the fall of the Soviet Union.

Anna is on the train when an usher announces the next stop.

Vivian continues that oligarchs start stashing their money in other countries, hiding it behind businesses they use as a front. The height of this was the same time Anna arrived in Germany.

The suits bring Anna to a restaurant, where her father happily greets her. He takes the bag and calls the waiter over to order a bottle of wine. Anna's surprised as Vadim never had anything nice before. In Russia, he had a Diet Coke once a year for his birthday. Vadim offers her one and says she'll like it. The waiter returns and says he was told to make sure Vadim knows the bottle of wine he ordered costs 3,000€. Vadim still wants that and a Diet Coke. Vadim tells Anna to remember how the waiter insulted them because they're foreign. People in Germany will assume they're poor and dirty. But he has powerful friends now and they aren't poor anymore. The waiter brings the drinks and Vadim pours Diet Coke into the wine glass, saying he likes his wine sweet. Vadim tells Anna to overwhelm people with her superiority and pours her her own drink.

Mira asks if Anna was smuggling money for her father. Vivian knows it's far-fetched, but it's not the weirdest rumor around about Anna. But for every three odd things you hear about Anna, one usually turns out to be true. She wants to visit the family villa.

Millikan asks Anna why she left New York and if she told anyone she was coming. He wants to know if there's anyone he could talk to, anyone back in Germany. It could help her get out of the hospital sooner. Anna says if she wanted to kill herself, she would have succeeded. She's not close with her family, but not in the way he thinks. Her life back in Germany is behind her now.

Mira and Vivian walk to the villa, but they find only an empty lot. Someone emerges from a building next door and Vivian recognizes Vadim. She calls to him, but he says to leave him alone and walks away.

At a restaurant, Vivian says that empty lot definitely used to be the villa. She and Mira toss ideas around of what might have happened to it.

Millikan asks Anna if she came to LA to run from something. The evidence suggests she was, but Anna says those things mean nothing. She starts talking about a character from Crime and Punishment.

Mira and Vivian enter a butcher shop. The butcher says he knew the Sorokins. Vadim tried to sell him a freezer, but he didn't trust Vadim. He believes Russians and Turks don't want to be part of real Germany society. Mira translates this for Vivian and they both leave, telling him his sausage sucks.

A teacher at Anna's former school says she read Vivian's article and couldn't believe it. At school, she was normal, if a little shy. Vivian has a hard time imagining that. The teacher says it may have just been her German, which wasn't perfect at that point. The teacher has to get to class, but wishes Vivian luck. Once she's gone, Vivian says the school looks like Hogwarts. Mira knew she'd say that because all Americans do. Vivian wishes she'd gone to a school like this. Mira did and hated it. They uses places like that to exclude people, particularly immigrants. Anna would have struggled.

Anna walks into the cafeteria. She introduces herself at a table, but they laugh at her after the Queen Bee makes a joke.

Vivian says their description doesn't sound like Anna to her.

Millikan and Anna talk about her move to Germany. Anna says she doesn't resent her father for it because she believed in the bright future he promised. It's hard for immigrants anywhere. He taught her not to let anyone define her by her past. Instead, she showed them the bright future she was building. She resented that he forgot this, when things started to fall apart for them in Germany. He started to drink and became small and weak and angry. When he got that way, Anna hid in her room and read magazines. She wanted to learn everything so she could be anything. She believed in the bright future and would do whatever it took to get it for herself. Millikan hands her a tissue and she realizes she's crying.

Vivian, through Mira, asks a wine merchant if he knows what happened to the villa. He looks at the picture and says it was condemned and demolished. Anna lived in a contaminated villa.

Vivian says Vadim really was selling refrigerators. He got the villa because no one else wanted it. And Anna was an awkward school girl. Heidi interrupts and asks if they're talking about Anna Sorokin. Heidi wishes she didn't know Anna, but she did. She was mean to Heidi at school. She was quiet at first, but then she became the fashion police. That sounds more like the Anna Vivian knows.

Anna, now dressed up, goes back to the same table and insults their clothes.

Vivian and Mira do shots with some Germany women, including Heidi. Lina says Anna was mean if she didn't like your outfit, which was every day for Lina. And everyone would laugh. Clara was the worst about that because she wanted Anna to like her, something Clara denies. She had this weird power over people, especially when they knew about her dad. Frieda explains that people said he was a gangster. They were scared of him and of Anna.

After the others have left, Vivian says there's something big here. Mira's less sure. All they've gotten is gossip and rumors. The only interview that matters is Vadim, who won't talk to them. Vivian wants to make him.

Anna tells Millikan that she left Germany to run to the beautiful world in the magazines. He says that world doesn't exist, but she says it does, in the big cities with their parties. When she was there, she felt like she'd made it until something happened to mar the memory, so she drank and took pills to numb the feeling. All that led her to the hospital.

Vivian goes to Vadim's workplace. Vadim tells her no reporters, but she says she knows Anna and actually broke the story. She doesn't know what he is except Anna's father who should be helping her. Vivian can help with that if he'll talk to her. Mira explains, in German, that Vivian's a nice person who is just stressed. She just has a few questions and then they'll leave him alone. Vadim agrees to talk to her.

Mira translates as Vadim says he can't explain what Anna did. He doesn't understand himself. She always wanted more. She got reckless. There's a saying in Russian about buying nice things instead of saving for a rainy day. Vivian asks him about the rumors that he has money hidden somewhere and where it might have come from. Vadim says all he's done is try to provide for his family. Vivian asks to meet his family, to come to his house. Vadim gets upset and leaves.

Anna says the worst thing is that she's acting exactly like her dad, drinking to avoid her problems. Trying to escape him led to her becoming him. Millikan says that's his last question. He's signing off on her release. He thinks it was an honest accident and doesn't believe she's at risk for further self-harm. He's recommending time at a drug and alcohol treatment facility. What they did today is just a start. It won't be enough to change her life. The change she needs to make takes work. She says rehab sounds trashy, but he says there are really nice places in LA.

Anna checks herself into Passages. An orderly tells her to feel free to walk around. She ignores him telling her they don't allow pictures, then says they don't have a payment method for her yet. She asks if they take wire transfers.

Neff, Rachel, and Kacy look at Anna's social media posts about Malibu. Rachel's appalled and says the cops are useless. Kacy's not letting Anna take any more from her. She advises Rachel to let her anger go and become her own story.

Vivian says Vadim was defensive, but Mira says he might have just been embarrassed. Vivian speculates about what Vadim might have done to Anna, ignoring Mira's view of him.

Anna talks in group about how LA is better than New York, so she's thinking about setting up her foundation there. The group therapist tries to talk about radical self-compassion, but Anna's phone rings so she leaves to take the call. It's Rachel, who misses her and says she's in LA. She asks Anna to meet up with her for lunch so they can start fresh. Anna asks Rachel to come pick her up.

Vivian follows Vadim as he leaves his building and walks somewhere. When he enters a home, Vivian tries to peek through the windows, but Ivan spots her and calls for his mother and father. Svetlana Sorokin opens the door and Ivan runs in. Vadim comes up behind her and tells Svetlana who Vivian is. She tells Vivian to come inside.

Anna interrupts group therapy, saying she has to go to lunch. He tells her she can't just leave, but she says it's not prison and walks out.

Outside, Anna calls Rachel, who tells her to come out through the gate, saying she's waiting there. As she does, Anna meets a sergeant, who arrests her, saying there's a warrant out for her arrest in New York.

Svetlana leads Ivan upstairs, leaving Vivian alone with Vadim. Vadim offers her a beer, which she accepts. Svetlana translates Vadim's apology to Vivian. It's been stressful for them with all the reporters. They get reports coming to their house every day, asking about Anna Delvey. They don't know the name Delvey. They don't want to talk to Vivian about Anna. Vivian tries to defend herself, saying someone else would have written about Anna if she hadn't. She's their daughter. She's heard a lot of rumors. Svetlana is aware of the rumors. Vivian says Anna actually is a criminal mastermind and had to learn that from somewhere. She's trying to figure out where. Svetlana sees that she's leaking milk through her shirt and says something to Vadim, who leaves the room. Svetlana has Vivian sit down and asks about her child. Svetlana says it's easier to imagine her and Vadim as monsters. But children don't come from their parents. They come through them. Vivian asks if Anna was always like she is. Svetlana says sometimes you have a child like Ivan, whose soul is your soul. And sometimes you have one like Anna, who is a stranger in your house. Vivian asks if Svetlana knows Anna tried to kill herself. She wonders why someone like Anna would do that. Vivian thought she might find the answer in Germany. Svetlana realizes Vivian cares about Anna. Anna's good at making people care about her. But they learned to let go, so Vivian can as well. Vadim returns with a clean shirt, which Vivian takes. She asks if they just let her go. Svetlana says no, she was always beyond them.

Young Anna cuts out pictures from magazines and puts her head on the bodies.

Vivian goes back to her place and finds Mira waiting. She tells Mira she's going home early. She'll make sure Mira still gets paid, but she's scrapping the article. No child should have to hear what her parents said about her. Mira had fun helping Vivian.

Vivian flies home.

Anna is flown home in handcuffs.

McCaw announces Anna's indictment and reads the charges.

Todd is advising a client when Anna comes by. She says hi to him and he says she's his client.

Kacy, Rachel, and Neff discuss Anna's arrest. They're shocked by it. Rachel admits she was on the phone with Anna when she was arrested, which Neff finds shady.

Anna boards the bus to Rikers. She sits next to a woman with face tattoos and compliments them.

Vivian returns home and hugs Jack, who tells her she has mail. She has an envelope from Germany, from Vadim. Inside is a note from Vadim saying the hospital sent them the papers, but he couldn't find the answer to why Anna would try to hurt herself in them, but maybe Vivian can. Attached is her psychiatric assessment from Cedars-Sinai. Vivian reads through it.

Vivian goes to visit Anna and shows her the paperwork. She wonders why Anna described her father differently to Millikan when she told everyone else he was rich and powerful. She didn't really try to kill herself. That's not the Anna Delvey story.

Anna calls and orders more rosé and says the door's unlocked in case she doesn't answer.

Vivian says it was just another scam. She played everyone in New York and then did the same in LA. She played Vivian too. Anna says she never claimed she tried to kill herself. People just love sob stories. Vivian wonders why Anna went to the trouble. Then she found out that Anna's visa was about to expire, but the clock stops for hospitalizations, including rehab. She was buying time. Anna starts clapping. Vivian tells her to stop. She tells Anna her father sent the forms, which surprises Anna. Vivian says she met Vadim and he's just a father who loves Anna. Anna asks why he isn't there if that's the case. Vivian says she's given a lot of people a lot of reasons to give up on Anna Delvey. But Vivian is still rooting for her and tells her she doesn't have to keep conning people. She can do something new. She tells her to kill Anna Delvey and stop the con. She needs to apologize and ask for the deal again, then go back to Germany to be with her family. She'd be Anna Sorokin again. Anna says that's not her story. Vivian asks what her story is then. Anna says Vivian's the journalist. She's supposed to figure that out for herself. Instead, she'll have to watch along with everyone else. She gets escorted back to her cell.

In her cell, Anna lies awake. She rolls over and puts her glasses on the nightstand.

Main Cast

 * Anna Chlumsky as Vivian Kent
 * Julia Garner as Anna Delvey
 * Arian Moayed as Todd Spodek
 * Katie Lowes as Rachel DeLoache Williams
 * Alexis Floyd as Neff Davis
 * Anders Holm as Jack Mercer
 * Anna Deavere Smith as Maud Lewis
 * Jeff Perry as Lou Shaw
 * Terry Kinney as Barry Klein
 * and Laverne Cox as Kacy Duke

Guest Stars

 * Anthony Edwards as Alan Reed
 * Rebecca Henderson as ADA Catherine McCaw
 * Tim Guinee as Paul Hudson
 * Saamer Usmani as Chase Sikorski
 * Peter Kurth as Vadim Sorokin
 * Armand Schultz as Landon Bloom
 * Deniz Orta as Mira
 * Emilia Pieske as Young Anna Sorokin
 * Aglaia Szyszkowitz as Svetlana Sorokin

Co-Starring

 * Miche Braden as Glitter Shadow Officer
 * Lisa Jill Anderson as Media Type
 * Michael Gilliam as Reporter
 * Anton Krymskiy as Ivan (Anna's Brother)
 * Gordon James as Group Therapist
 * Jay Jackson as News Anchor
 * Kasturi as Influencer
 * Kieron J. Anthony as Dr. Millikan
 * James Hightower as Vlogger 1
 * Daphne Zelle as Vlogger 2
 * T.L. Flint as Guard
 * John Fico as Cabbie
 * Lucie Soléne Allouche as Twenty Something Girl
 * Matthew Griffin as Chateau Bellhop
 * Manuel Lujan as Sergeant
 * Anton Levit as Suit 1
 * Oleg Tikhomirov as Suit 2
 * Chris Theisinger as Usher - Train
 * Marwin Funck as Fancy German Waiter
 * Christian Maria Goebel as German Policeman
 * Rainer Reiners as Butcher
 * Harald Effenberg as Wine Merchan
 * Petra Nadolny as Teacher
 * Johanna Hens as Queen Bee
 * Anthony Sorrells as Orderly
 * Lea Gerstenkorn as Heidi
 * Bianca Nawrath as Lina
 * Carolin Klema as Clara (Classmate)
 * Souhalia Amade as Frieda (Classmate)
 * Nick Giangiulio as Total Stranger