Arian Moayed Is the King of New York

“I love New York,” Arian Moayed tells me over Zoom. “I’ve been in New York for over 20 years. I moved September 11, 2002, if you can believe that…. I’m, like, Mr. New York.” Last year he put his Big Apple bona fides to the test onscreen, playing two filthy rich Manhattanites: Stewy Hosseini, Kendall Roy’s frenemy on season three of HBO’s Emmy-winning Succession, and menswear designer Kian Parsa on the second season of HBO Max’s Love Life.

Now he’s taking on a New Yorker from the other side of the tracks as Todd Spodek, the now iconic “fake German heiress” Anna Delvey’s criminal defense attorney, on the highly anticipated Netflix series Inventing Anna, which hits the streamer February 11.

“The one that I’m weirdly closest to in regards to class is Todd,” says Moayed of his three New Yorkers. Early in the series, the lawyer tells Anna Chlumsky’s Vivian Kent that he feels “like a valet trying to help ma pay for rent.”

“That I understand,” says Moayed. “I was born in Iran. I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. That was my upbringing. That’s who I grew up with. Those were my people, and I understood that immigrant hustle.”

That immigrant hustle is a crucial ingredient in the rise and fall of Spodek’s client, born Anna Sorokin—a Russian-born German fraudster and wannabe girlboss who was convicted in 2019 on multiple counts of grand larceny for defrauding banks, hotels, and New York’s elite. Created and executive produced by television maven Shonda Rhimes, Inventing Anna casts Delvey’s real-life drama in a soapy, Instagram-filtered light reminiscent of Rhimes’s hit ABC show Scandal. It follows Delvey, played by Emmy winner Julia Garner, as she scams and swindles Manhattan’s überwealthy elite and winds up in desperate need of Spodek’s services.

“Two weeks before my audition, I did 12 weeks of grand jury duty in the Manhattan court system,” Moayed says. “I understand why people are like, ‘Everyone’s got to do jury duty.’ We should know how fucking unfair our system is. It’s crazy how much we overcharge young people, especially Black and brown people. It’s really, really abnormal.”

Moayed drew upon his courtroom experience as well as transcripts from Delvey’s trial to tap into Spodek, who still runs a law practice in Lower Manhattan. “You can tell that he’s liked in the room,” he says. “You could tell he’s got charisma. You can tell that he’s making jokes sometimes. You can tell the jokes aren’t landing sometimes. I learned a lot from the transcripts of Todd Spodek.”

This attention to detail comes naturally to Moayed, who began his career as a theater actor. He earned a Tony nomination in 2011 for playing Musa in Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, opposite Robin Williams. When not playing New Yorkers on television, Moayed teaches acting at the Professional Performing Arts School and is the cofounder and board chair of the civically minded, socially conscious theater and arts education nonprofit Waterwell. His background informed his chemistry with Chlumsky, playing a fictionalized version of reporter Jessica Pressler—whose New York magazine feature on Delvey served as the primary inspiration for the series. “I feel like what was easy about working with Chlumsky is that we’re in the theater together,” Moayed says. “There’s a shorthand that theater people have that can make something happen.”

“Jessica Pressler said early on that Todd and Jessica felt like mom and dad to Anna Delvey,” Moayed says. “I’m a dad to two ladies, 11 and 13. At first I was like, Oh, I could see that, but then I was realizing that Delvey really didn’t have a lot of people on her team.” Their father-daughter dynamic reaches a climactic, thrilling head in the series finale, when Garner and Moayed engage in a screaming match over—what else—clothes.

Moayed’s character might be the only one in the entire series who is completely honest with the con artist, telling Delvey to her face that she may not be all she’s cracked up to be. “There’s a line when they’re fucking railing at each other where [Todd] says, ‘Do you believe your lies?’ I latched on to that and said, What happens if that question is not rhetorical? What happens if that question is fucking real?”