“The show is fictionalized, and the character is a guide to this universe. When I met Anna Chlumsky, she was like, ‘I’m not doing you,’ and I was like, ‘Great!’” Pressler told Vulture’s The Critics newsletter in 2022. “Vivian is like an all-caps angry email of me, but there are things that are very real mixed into it.” So, just who is the real-life Vivian, and was what the show depicted of her true? Continue reading to find out.
Who is Jessica Pressler?
Pressler is a journalist, graduate of Temple University and a producer of Inventing Anna. In 2018, New York Magazine published her viral article “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People.” Funny enough, Pressler told Shondaland that she learned about Anna from a courthouse photographer she had met while reporting on her “The Hustlers at Scores" story, which inspired the 2019 film Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu. “I met this courthouse photographer, Steve Hirsch, when I was reporting on the “Hustlers” story,” she shared. “I called him at one point because I was thinking about possibly doing a book about female con artists, which I didn’t do, and he told me about Anna.”
Where does Jessica Pressler work now?
According to her Simon & Schuster author page, Pressler is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, though her website states she is a staff writer at New York magazine.
Did Jessica Pressler lose a job at Bloomberg?
In real life, Pressler did lose a job offer with Bloomberg after New York magazine published a story in its “Reasons to Love New York” issue about a high schooler named Mohammed Islam (not Donovan Lamb, which was the name of the student on Inventing Anna) who was rumored to have made millions picking stocks. In an apology to readers in 2014, New York said that the “magazine published a story about a Stuyvesant High School senior named Mohammed Islam, who was rumored to have made $72 million trading stocks. Islam said his net worth was in the “high eight figures.” As part of the research process, the magazine sent a fact-checker to Stuyvesant, where Islam produced a document that appeared to be a Chase bank statement attesting to an eight-figure bankaccount.” The statement continued, “After the story’s publication, people questioned the $72 million figure in the headline, which was written by editors based on the rumored figure. The headline was amended. But inan interview with the New YorkObserver last night, Islam now says his entire story was made up. A source close to the Islam family told the WashingtonPost thatthe statements were falsified. We were duped. Our fact-checking process was obviously inadequate; we take full responsibility and we should have known better. New York apologizes to ourreaders.” Pressler admitted to Vulture’s The Critics newsletter that she did not “bring up the “Reasons to Love” thing to Shonda and the others, it was just something they found since it was easily Googleable. The weird thing is that had happened before withHustlers, and that story was a part of that character before it got cut out. I understood why it made it in. I get that there’s this parallel in that you’re writing about a con artist and then appear to have been conned.”
Was Jessica Pressler actually pregnant while writing her story?
Like Vivian, Pressler was pregnant while working on her story, but unlike the show, she didn’t work until her water broke. “I was super pregnant while reporting that story and finished two weeks or so before I had a baby. It was not a thing where there was a towel on the floor of the office, but they did tell me she was going to be pregnant,” she told The Critics newsletter. “I think Shonda liked the idea of a woman being pregnant, and it was an interesting thing to show that you can live your life while being pregnant.” And in case you were wondering, Pressler did not have a murder wall in her baby’s room. “I wish I had—I’m a little bit jealous of Vivian’s,” she told Shondaland. Pressler also didn’t miss an ultrasound appointment. She said, “The timelines are different, and the way that it unfolds is different. It’s one of those things that parts of it are very real, and then there are bits that are totally made up.”
Does Jessica Pressler keep in touch with the real Anna?
Pressler and Anna have stayed in contact since the journalist’s article came out. When asked by The Critics newsletter, when was the last time she was in touch with Anna, Pressler answered, “It’s been a few months. She’s still in custody.”
Is Jessica Pressler married?
Yes. Pressler is married to Josh Uhl. On Inventing Anna, actor Anders Holm played Vivian’s husband Jack. She told The Critics newsletter, “I thought it was nice that Shonda said she wanted to portray a happy marriage. You see a lot of working women on television with personal lives that are compromised, and I thought it was a cool thing that they wanted to show a different kind of dynamic.”
Did Jessica Pressler really lend Anna clothes?
Turns out she did! The journalist revealed to The Critics newsletter that she lent clothes to Anna for the trial. But, she noted, “It wasn’t a fraught situation for me the way it was for Vivian. It was more like this kind of screwball sequence of ridiculousness.” Pressler recalled Anna’s lawyer Todd Spodek asking her to go to H&M after the court did not, “for some reason,” have clothes for Anna that first day and jury members had been waiting four hours. “I was like yes, for God’s sake, let’s move this thing along. Otherwise everyone’s time was going to be endlessly wasted with this wardrobe shit,” she shared. “That sort of opened the door for me to fill the gap whenever there was a ‘wardrobe malfunction,’ as the prosecutor put it.” She also purchased the white dress, a snake-print dress and threw in one of her black “dresses at one point.” “I did not feel like it was a conflict at all,” Pressler said. “I felt like,This will be a funny story someday.”
Was Scriberia real?
Scriberia was in fact a real place at the office. “Scriberia in the show and in real life is the land of longform writers, which atNew York Magazine was a wonderful place to be,” Pressler admitted to The Critics newsletter. She added, “As atManhattanmagazine, most of the inhabitants were older and the kind of old-school reporters who talked on the phone a lot, sometimes quite loudly, which was probably the real reason it was in the office hinterlands. But the fictional version feels similar in spirit in terms of the convivial atmosphere—the way the reporters help each other out and also complain a lot.” Next, learn all about the real-life scandal behind Inventing Anna.
