Julia Garner is already an award-winner for Ozark, but somehow her upcoming project has the aura of a Big Break even though she’s already pretty big. Everyone has been waiting for an Anna Delvey adaptation since the moment Jessica Pressler’s story about the grifter hit the Internet, and finally this month Shondaland is bringing Inventing Anna to Netflix — a huge deal for Garner and also for Shonda Rhimes, as I believe it’s the first contemporary series she’s made outside her old ABC deal. And Garner is a natural choice for a cover subject because she’s buzzy, but also not omnipresent. No one has really jumped on the Julia Garner Story, and in fact, T&C didn’t entirely either; I came away from reading Chloe Malle’s piece with an understanding that everyone thinks she’s a very good, cerebral actor, and a glimmer of a mention of childhood epilepsy and learning challenges, but not necessarily anything else about what got her here or how she ticks. (Maybe we’ll save that for Vogue or Elle.) Oh, and also that she’s tiny. “Thin as Delvey’s credit rating,” Malle writes, an undoubtedly pithy turn of phrase. She pins it afterward to a line uttered in Ozark — “You’ve got balls for such a slight little thing” — that Malle feels is true of much of Garner’s work. But pieces about women always go to who ate what, and how big or small or fresh-faced they are, and I understand the temptation to set that scene… but also wish they would resist it more often. Still, it’s a small nit in an otherwise pleasant read, which I don’t think will be the last one we’ll get about Garner in 2022.
[Photos: Danny Kasirye via Town & Country; the issue hits newsstands Jan. 25]
