Where Is Inventing Anna's Neffatari Davis Today?
In the spring of 2022, Netflix released "Inventing Anna," a dramatic retelling of some of the key events in the life of "Anna Delvey," who was actually Anna Sorokin. For those not familiar with the story, Sorokin was the daughter of a Russian tradesman and his wife, living in Germany. As Insider reports, Sorokin was enamored with wealth, celebrity, and the hard-partying lifestyle of New York City's fashion-conscious elite. However, she lacked wealth herself and instead lived the lifestyle using a pseudonym, largely on credit, scamming friends and businesses out of tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
One of the key people in Delvey/Sorokin's story is Neffatari Davis (pictured above), or "Neff," portrayed in the series by Alexis Floyd. She was an aspiring screenwriter working at a hotel when she met Delvey, and it appears as if her connection to the fake socialite may be opening up doors for her as an author and/or filmmaker.
Anna Delvey scammed New York City
In 2013, according to The New York Times, a German heiress named Anna Delvey showed up in New York City, and soon enough was living her best life in The Big Apple. She wore designer clothes, stayed in fancy hotels, and partied it up with the city's young, wealthy elite.
As BBC News reported, whenever there was a party, Delvey was there, and whenever there was a camera, she was keen to make sure she was in the frame. Whenever anyone asked, she would say that she was an heiress. Of course, as you're already aware, it was all fiction: Delvey was neither German nor an heiress, and in fact was broke. Often as not, she'd have someone else pay for her drinks rather than buy them herself, and frequently made excuses to stay at friends' homes. Her hotel stays and other aspects of her lifestyle were funded largely by her "heiress" schtick, convincing managers that she had the money to pay her bills and that it was perpetually on its way. More than once, she was shown the door, and by 2017, her scam had caught up to her, and she was put on trial.
But she didn't scam Neff
For a few months in 2017, according to Vanity Fair, Delvey was staying at New York City's luxury 11 Howard Hotel. According to staff there, she acted like an entitled princess and treated the support staff there exceptionally rudely, but also earned back their favor by doling out $100 tips. And when Delvey couldn't come up with the tens of thousands of dollars in bills she'd racked up at the hotel, she was shown the door.
Despite her bad attitude toward service workers and her nonexistent intentions of paying the bill, according to South China Morning Post, it seems that there was one person at 11 Howard who hit it off with Delvey: concierge Neffatari ("Neff") Davis, an aspiring screenwriter. Delvey would often share food and drinks with the concierge, and would even spend hours sitting next to Neff while she completed her shift. Still, Delvey was ultimately kicked out of the hotel.
Neffatari made a ton of money from 'Inventing Anna'
When Shonda Rhimes signed a $100 million production deal with Netflix, according to OkayPlayer, the first story she started working on was "Inventing Anna." That meant, among other things, contacting as many of the people who had crossed paths with Delvey as possible and, when necessary, paying them for the rights to their story. One of those people was Neff, who was not only paid for her story rights, but was also brought on as a consultant for the Netflix series.
How much money Davis made from those two things isn't clear, but it appears that it's a lot. As Showbiz Cheat Sheet explains, as soon as she deposited the check, the first thing she did was look for luxury apartments in New York City. "I was living in, like, the hood in Harlem, and my apartment was 300 square feet. When Netflix bought my life rights, I literally Googled 'luxury apartments in Brooklyn' because I had always wanted to live in Williamsburg," she said.
She appears to have left New York for L.A.
If you're going to work in the movie industry, then you need to live near where the action is, and in this case, that means the City of Angels: Los Angeles. Despite having apparently researched luxury properties in New York, several reports suggest that Neffatari Davis has put the Big Apple behind her in favor of L.A.
In February 2022, OkayPlayer reported that Neff was living the good life in Los Angeles. "I have just been living my best life. I have never been able to not work and not get up every day. So, I'm basking in that because men do — men brag about not having to work and about getting off early. So I'm like, You know what — when people have been asking me, 'What are you doing in LA?' Relaxing," she said. Marie Claire also reported that Neff was living in L.A., managing Delvey's Instagram account (Delvey/Sorokin herself is currently incarcerated in a New York ICE detention facility, and is likely to be deported back to Germany, according to Today).
Neff's filmmaking dreams may be coming true
As of this writing, Neff has one, and only one, IMDb credit to her name, and that's for her consulting role on "Inventing Anna." However, the length of her résumé may soon be increasing, to hear her tell it. According to Marie Claire, she's finished her first TV script, although details remain under wraps. Further, she told OkayPlayer that she's been discussing offers. "A lot of people have reached out due to finding out about my story, or are asking to see my scripts ... I have been taking a lot of meetings [with] people that want to see my work," she said, adding that she hopes filming on her first project will begin by summer.
In a February 2022 Instagram post, Neff told her followers that, despite how she was portrayed on "Inventing Anna," she has no regrets. "I'm happy. Healthy ... writing scripts ... writing a fire-a** book," she said at the time.