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Louise Thomas
Editor
Anna Delvey has said she is standing by the blunt comment she made about her brieft stint on Dancing with the Stars.
On 24 September, the 33-year-old convicted con artist was eliminated during week two of the competition after performing a quickstep dance inspired by The Devil Wears Prada with her professional partner, Ezra Sosa.
Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorkinm was the subject of the hit Netflix series Inventing Anna. She has since been criticised by Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba for the “dismissive” comments she made on-air following her elimination.
As one of the show’s hosts Julianne Hough asked Delvey what she would be taking away from her time on the show, Delvey bluntly replied: “Nothing.”
Addressing the exchange in the latest episode of Tori Spelling’s podcast misSPELLING, Delvey explained why she made the comment because it “was the truth”.
Delvey explained that the feedback she received from the judges each week had not “paid off” for her.
“[The judges] told me what I’m supposed to do. I tried to do it and then I still was rejected. And, I’m taking away nothing. This is what I’m taking away from it, because your advice was worthless,” she said.
“The advice did not pay off for me, even though I tried to follow it. And this is how I felt,” she continued. “I know... people were trying to interpret my answer in different ways, but no, not really. I really did not take away much from this experience.”
Delvey, who wore a bedazzled ankle monitor as a part of her costume while on the show, said she felt like she had to be “on the defensive” due to the backlash she received after being cast on the show.
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“I think everyone on the cast was generally very nice to me. But in the end, I don’t know,” she said.
Delvey further expressed that she was confused as to why she was eliminated so early on in the competition, given how much “effort” the producers had put into casting her.
“Because I felt like, well, they were building me up. It’s like, oh, well, ‘Only if you smile more, only if you do like x y z,” she said. “It’s going to be so much better for you.’ And it felt like they put so much effort trying to get me on the show, like, make me feel comfortable just to... eliminate me this early.”
Delvey said that the overall experience was “a bit upsetting to me” and “felt like a waste of time to discard me so easily”.
In 2017, Delvey was charged with two counts of attempted grand larceny in the first degree, three counts of grand larceny in the second degree, and one count of grand larceny in the third degree after she stole more than $200,000 from businesses, banks, and friends while posing as a fake heiress.
