Speaking to Marie Claire, the 28-year-old said she met Sorokin in the medium-security women’s prison where the fraudster was serving her sentence before the filming of the show.
Anna bluntly asked the actress how she was going to portray her. "Can you do me right now?" the con artist asked.
“It was very intimidating, but when I just repeated what she was saying, she thought it was so funny. I told Anna that it was my goal for people to see her as a person instead of a caricature. They don’t have to agree with what she did, but they should be open and willing to understand why she did it. People make mistakes and Anna is a person”, the actress told Marie Claire.
"Anna’s accent tells an important story: she’s covering up who she really is. She was lying to herself about not being Russian, so much so that she lost it from her voice. Her Russian comes out for a millisecond when she’s crying or really tired or drunk", she said.
"When I saw the photo, I didn’t recognise myself. It was so weird. That feeling doesn’t happen often", she said.
Between 2013 and 2017 she is said to have swindled hundreds of thousands of dollars from individuals, banks, hotels, and restaurants. In 2017, she was arrested, and two years later she was found guilty on eight charges, including grand larceny in the second degree, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services. She was given a sentence of 4 to 12 years with a $24,000 fine and an order to pay restitution of around $200,000.
The 31-year-old rejected the notion that she was a scammer and dismissed accusations of falsifying banks statements, saying it was a misguided attempt to fund her foundation, which she believed would become a success.
Anna Sorokin is not the only person who has become the subject of a Netflix show. An Israeli man, Simon Leviev, who has been accused of swindling $10 million from women he met on Tinder, has gained fame thanks to the streaming service. Just like Sorokin, Simon claims he is innocent.