Anna “Delvey” Sorokin exited Dancing with the Stars during last week’s first-round elimination, but the convicted felon has since revealed that her ill feelings towards the show are rooted in more than just the fact that she left the ballroom without the coveted Mirrorball Trophy.
Following her short-lived stint on the ABC competition series, Anna spoke to NBC News about her ‘DWTS’ experience, insisting she was only cast on Season 33 to boost the show’s ratings.
“I feel that the show so obviously used me to drive up the ratings, that they never had any plans to give me any chance to grow and only cared about exploiting me for attention,” she told the outlet in a statement. “It was predatory of them to try [to] make me feel inadequate and stupid all while I did get progressively better, yet they chose to disregard that.”
After getting eliminated last week (along with her dance partner, Ezra Sosa) Anna was asked by co-host and former ‘DWTS’ pro Julianne Hough what she would be taking away from the ‘DWTS’ experience, to which Anna replied, “nothing.”
The blunt response caught Julianne off-guard, and made headlines, with some on social media calling Anna “ungrateful” and “bitter” about being eliminated so early.
On a recent episode of fellow Season 33 cast member Tori Spelling’s misSPELLING podcast, Anna expounded on her “nothing” response, telling listeners it “was the truth.”
“You guys told me what I’m supposed to do. I tried to do it and then I still was rejected,” she said, as reported by Deadline. “And I’m taking away nothing. This is what I’m taking away from it, because your advice was worthless.”
She went on to reveal that, because of the backlash she received after just being cast on the show– despite the producers, whom she admitted did attempt to defend her publicly– Anna said she “had to be on the defensive.”
While Anna delivered the one-word response while laughing, many viewers felt that her answer was in poor taste. However, as Anna mentioned on Tori’s podcast, she had actually been on the receiving end of backlash from fans prior to dropping the parting words word on camera.
When the Season 33 cast was announced by ABC at the beginning of September, many viewers of the show expressed outrage over the fact that Anna had been invited to bring her moves to the ballroom– ankle monitor and all. Anna committed a series of financial crimes that inspired the Netflix series Inventing Anna. In 2019, she was convicted on eight counts– including grand larceny and theft of services– and sentenced to 12 years in prison, fined $24,000 and ordered to pay nearly $200,000 in restitution. Anna was released from prison on good behavior in February 2021, though just weeks later, the faux German heiress was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for overstaying her visa, after which she was sent back to prison for 18 months.
In October 2022, the former scammer was released on a $10,000 bond and put on house arrest.
Upon nabbing the ‘DWTS’ gig, Anna revealed that, in order to compete on the show, she had to get permission from ICE to travel from her current home in New York City to Los Angeles, where ‘DWTS’ is filmed.
While Anna wasn’t the only “celeb” to be knocked out of the competition during last week’s elimination, she has gone on to call out the viewers and the ‘DWTS’ judges for allegedly not playing fair.
“It felt like I was never really given a fair chance by the viewers or some of the judges, given their nonsensical scoring,” she explained. “It’s supposed to be a dance competition and not a popularity contest.”
Even Anna’s dance partner Ezra came to her defense amid the backlash from fans, claiming on TikTok that Anna was “crying” in the bathroom due to the hate she was receiving online. Ezra insisted that, while Anna’s crimes were “not right,” no one “deserves the amount of hate she’s getting.”
Ezra also argued that his partner was deserving of a “second chance”– something Anna says she’s still fighting to get.
“I’m trying to start a new chapter moving past mistakes I made and regret when I was much younger,” she told NBC News. “Not sure when people will finally afford me that second chance and stop persecuting me so I have the opportunity to move on with my life.”
Watch Anna’s second (and final) ‘DWTS’ performance below.
New episodes of ‘DWTS’ air Tuesdays on ABC and Disney +.
(Photos: ABC; Instagram; YouTube)
6 Responses
She disgusts me. Why even put her on the air? Theres alot of other people they could have chosen.
Anna, they can never make me hate you
Guess she’s never watched reality television.
She’s the very definition of a narcissist, I’d be quite surprised if she was never diagnosed as one. She literally meets every single criteria, not just in behavior but also the way her mind functions generally. She thinks the world owes her everything, she’s better than everyone, everything she does is the best, and no one, anywhere, ever, gives her the chance she thinks she deserves at anything.
Her whole take on everything is more than just a little disturbing. They never should have put her on the show at all. But people need to stop feeding her ego too. She has way too many people around her that just feed her narcissism, honestly. She never should have been given back access to social media or given a bigger wandering radius than she originally had either. I really hope they deport her ass soon. She made $360,000 off the netflix special, but she HATES the series, because it paints her as exactly what she is-and she can’t stand it. I highly encourage others to watch it if they haven’t yet (Inventing Anna). She already got paid for it (and had to use almost all of it to pay restitution), so, it’s not like your views will get her more out of the deal. She hates that people are even watching it, lmao.
Never watched it, but DWTS must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if convicted conwoman Anna Delvey is considered a “star”. There was an entire (very entertaining) miniseries about her awfulness. Hopefully she’ll be deported soon – apparently her court case is pending.
And who did she swindle to get the money for her new face? That wasn’t her facial structure a few years ago. Unless she marries a gullible rich old man, she’ll wind up back in prison since that leopard hasn’t changed her spots.
It’s giving…‘I’m used to people pandering to me so give me what I want’. Idek who this girl is other than a felon with a self-righteous attitude. She could’ve easily said ‘no thanks’ and moved on. 🤦🏻♀️