Anna Sorokin, the convicted art world fraudster who—for a time, at least—successfully fooled New York’s elite into believing she was a multimillionaire heiress, was voted off Dancing with the Stars this week after just two performances. The real-life inspiration for Inventing Anna on Netflix (who went by her alias Anna Delvey on the show) failed to reinvent herself as a ballroom dancer.
Sorokin was booted off in the season’s first round of cuts in a double elimination with Tori Spelling, the actress of Beverly Hills, 90210 fame. In her final performance with dancing partner Ezra Sosa, Sorokin danced the quickstep to Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall and earned a score of 17 out of 30 from the judges, one point lower than the pair received the previous week for their debut dance to Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso. While 18 was high enough to keep them roughly in the middle of results last week, on Tuesday Sorokin and Ezra earned the second-lowest judge’s score.
This week’s eliminations were determined by a combination of scores and audience votes. Sorokin was noted to be an unpopular contestant among Dancing with the Stars viewers. Last week, judge Carrie Ann Inaba remarked on the audience’s “shift in the energy in this room” when Sorokin came on stage for her performance.
“I just want to say, let’s all just give this a chance, because I can imagine that this is scary for you,” Inaba told Sorokin before addressing the audience. “I’m not pro or against what you’ve done, but this is about your dancing here, so let’s all give her this space, please.”
Dancing with the Stars fans have criticised the show for casting Sorokin, who rose to notoriety after she was convicted of grand larceny and other charges relating to swindling friends, acquaintances, hotels and major banking institutions in order to lead a jet-set lifestyle and attempt to open her own art foundation. Others, like Whoopi Goldberg, have questioned how she has been able to stay in the US on house arrest while in custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while so many others in her position are deported. (Sorokin, who was born in the then-Soviet Union and later immigrated with her family to Germany, is currently fighting deportation. She said ICE gave her permission to compete on the show, albeit with her now-infamous bedazzled ankle monitor.)
Despite the controversy, Sorokin’s dry one-liners have earned her folk-hero status with some fans. After her elimination, when asked what she would take away with her from her stint on Dancing with the Stars, Sorokin answered flatly: “Nothing.”