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"Don’t be offended, but I’m having a cupcake for breakfast," Arian Moayed says when he joins our Zoom call. The cake in question – chocolate, white icing – has not been swiped from a bakery, licked and then returned to the counter, as Moayed's character did with a doughnut in one early episode of Succession, but more wholesomely is a remnant of his daughter's eleventh birthday party.
41-year-old Iranian–American actor Moayed is known for playing the needling smooth-talker Stewy Hosseini on the juggernaut HBO series. Fittingly, he is talking to me from his family home in Manhattan, a borough that plays a key part in his next series: Netflix's dramatisation of the story of 'fake German heiress' Anna Delvey, the scammer who conned New York's banks and party people.
Like Stewy, Moayed is charming and dramatic, but like Anna Delvey's lawyer Todd Spodek, who he plays in the forthcoming series, he's also thoughtful and sincere in conversation. Ahead of Inventing Anna landing on the streaming platform this week, Moayed talked to Esquire about the struggle of striving immigrants, the scams New York City is built on, and his hopes for season four of Succession.
Inventing Anna is one of a number of stories of real scammers about to hit TV. Why do you think the grifter genre is so alluring at the moment?
As a society we are so fascinated with the other side of the coin, especially as many of us don’t have access to the kind of places that Anna Delvey did. I think we love to see people get away with it, it really is an age old thing. All of Shakespeare’s characters kind of got away with it at the end of it, especially in the comedies.
Is this story a comedy or a tragedy?
Wow, I mean, you just asked the biggest question. I think it’s a tragedy, with social media the exterior might be pretty, but at the end of the day she’s going to be in a cold, hard [cell]. But, you know, Anna Delvey would be the first person to tell you that you and I talking right now means that it was worth it.
Do you think this is a uniquely New York story?
Scammers can live anywhere, but I think in New York the access is easier than anywhere else: you can go to four parties in different neighbourhoods in one night. I walk down some of the old streets in Manhattan, look up, and wonder how many people faked their way to this store or building through a couple of signatures .
Have you met people like Anna Delvey?
We all know people in our lives that can kind of get away with shit. I don’t know anyone who would do anything like this, but survival is a thing and we all have to do a version of it. I’m an immigrant from Iran and grew up in a neighbourhood with all different ethnicities on the north side of Chicago. I saw people trying to fake it to survive all the time in a putting food on the table kind of way. Even though [Anna] is quote-unquote an immigrant, her hunger is the only thing that’s relatable to me. Immigrants are very – I’m going to say a broad statement – hardworking and scared of authority figures. Anna did not have those qualities, she is completely fearless and really doesn’t give a shit about any authority figure, period.
Julia Garner, who plays Anna, spent time with her in prison. How did her intel inform your understanding of her and portrayal of her real-life lawyer Todd Spodek?
Julia and I really dissected Anna and that informed some of the big scenes in later episodes. She was saying that there’s something about [Anna] that’s really likeable: she was fun and cool. I have friends that fib a lot, but they’re still good at a party and fun to hang out with, so that was really informative for us.
The show taps into this ‘eat the rich’ mentality that is brewing as wealth disparity increases, do you think people root for Anna as an anti-hero because they want to see people cheat a broken system?
I think so, as Todd says, “Everyone fucking hates banks”. Who is like, 'I really hope the bank wins this one!’? It’s different to the Theranos founder [Elizabeth Holmes]. Anna is not taking your fucking blood, she’s opening up a Soho House. I can also make the argument that it’s not as great as opening a rehab centre, but it seems meek.
My mum saw the show and loves Anna Delvey, but the thing that really put her over the edge was her staying so long as a guest on the boat. 'That’s really inappropriate. When you’re asked to leave, you have to leave,' she said. I was like, 'Mum, what about the jet she stole?!'.
This world of money and power and the performance that goes with it will feel familiar to Succession fans, do you feel this is part of the same world as the Roys?
There is a level of excess that both of the worlds are exploring. To me, Succession has a commentary about capitalism that I think is very astute and damning. I think Stewy is the most sane one of all of them, but everyone on that show is so fucking nuts and out of touch with how humanity works. I think Inventing Anna is definitely interested in exploring the cost of her actions, and maybe Delvey doesn’t give a shit but everyone else seems to.
Do you think that Stewy would have been fooled by Anna Delvey?
No. No way. Impossible. Stewy really knows how to read people, and if you have the money he would know. Even the [richest characters] in Inventing Anna are still not on the same level as the Stewys and Roys of the world, which shows you how fucking tragic our economic systems are where we have so many levels of money.
The Succession writers room has just reconvened, what are your hopes for Stewy in season four?
I genuinely have no idea and I don’t want to know. Opening up a cold table read of the next episode of Succession is one of the genuine delights of life for me. What we do know is that Sandi and Stewy now have four board seats, and I think Lukas Mattson is a winner for Stewy. That being said, Stewy will flip and go with whoever will win the prize, and he’s been very clear about that.
I feel like there’s not been any resolution of why [Kendall] pulled out of that bear hug letter [in season two, after Logan discovered Kendall had been involved in the fatal car accident]. They had the whole world in [their] hands and he fucking walked, so I’m excited to see if that ever has a resolution, but I don’t want to predict. I hope what we see is Stewy winning, whatever that means.
‘Inventing Anna’ is on Netflix 11 February
