After Her Brutal One-Word Response To Being Eliminated From “Dancing With The Stars” Went Viral, Anna Delvey Has Claimed She Was Exploited

For context, Anna gained public attention after she pretended to be a German heiress and defrauded banks and hotels, as well as several people in her life. 

Anna was arrested in 2017, and convicted of grand larceny in the second degree, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services in 2019.

Her story gained even more prominence when it was turned into a Netflix series called Inventing Anna in 2022. 

Anna, who is Russian, was released from prison early for good behavior. However, in 2021, she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for overstaying her visa.

In October 2022, she was placed under house arrest as she continued her fight to stay in the US legally. Despite this, she was able to sign up for Dancing with the Stars after gaining permission from ICE to travel out of state. The show is filmed in Los Angeles, and Anna is based in New York. 

"It's just not that serious,” she said. "If someone is that upset about casting on a dancing show, I don't know what to tell them."

Anna made her DWTS debut with a bejeweled, legally-mandated ankle monitor on display on Sept. 17, and performed the cha-cha with her professional partner, Ezra Sosa. 

At the time, Anna caused a stir with her blunt response to being asked what she will take away from her time on the show, with Anna simply stating: “Nothing.”

“It was predatory of them to try [to] make me feel inadequate and stupid all while I did get progressively better, yet they chose to disregard that,” Anna added. 

Reps for Dancing with the Stars haven’t publicly responded to Anna’s claims.

In a video that he posted to his Instagram page, the dancer tearfully shared: “On my end, I was feeling so much positivity. On my partner's end, she wasn't receiving the same. I think the hardest part of my day after [the] press line, she was reading the comments, and we couldn't find her.”

“They finally found her in the bathroom,” he revealed. "She was crying. I've never seen her like that, and it broke my heart."

"I know what she did was really controversial and was not right,” Ezra went on to add. "I can never justify that for her and for anyone in her life; it's really hard for me, because this person that I'm truly just falling in love with every single day in rehearsal isn't the person that everyone sees in the media."