‘Inventing Anna’ Has a Hilarious Fyre Festival Easter Egg

Netflix’s new Shondaland series Inventing Anna attempts to retell the story of one of the most notorious scammers to ever hit New York City: Anna Delvey (Julia Garner). The series attempts to piece together how Russian-born Anna Sorokin managed to fool so many of Manhattan’s elite influencers and investors into believing she was a loaded German heiress. As it happens, Anna wasn’t the only con artist in their midst. For a few episodes, Anna literally crashes with pal Billy McFarland (Ben Rappaport), the mastermind behind the disastrous Fyre Festival. So how does Fyre Fest tie in with Netflix’s Inventing Anna?

Inventing Anna is Shonda Rhimes’s long-awaited take on the juicy tale of Anna Delvey, a fake socialite who scammed her way to the top of New York City society and wound up in jail for a spell. Born Anna Sorokin to a working class family in Russia, Delvey’s life changed forever when her parents relocated to Germany when she was 16. After attending school in London and nabbing a Paris internship, Anna rechristened herself “Anna Delvey” and started hobnobbing with the fashion elite. Delvey found herself in New York City for NYFW and just…stayed. She was eventually discovered as a fraud years later, when she was on the cusp of getting a $22 million loan against fortunes that didn’t exist.

Inventing Anna digs into how Delvey managed to cunningly woo the glamorous upper crust of New York City, but it also shows her struggling at times. What’s a girl to do when she can’t rely on wealthy pals to pick up her hotel bills from time to time? She does what any twentysomething in between homes does, and crashes on a friend’s couch. In Inventing Anna, we learn that friend was none other than Billy McFarland, the man responsible for another of the most wild scams of the last decade: Fyre Festival. (It was reported in 2018 that Delvey might have scammed McFarland himself.)

So who is Billy McFarland and what was Fyre Festival? And who plays Billy McFarland in Inventing Anna? Here’s everything you need to know about the Fyre Festival Easter eggs in Netflix’s Inventing Anna.

Who Plays Billy McFarland in Netflix’s Inventing Anna?

In Inventing Anna Episode 3, we learn that Anna is crashing with “friend” Billy McFarland. While she doesn’t seem thrilled to be there, it does lend itself to some hilarious scenes where the two “entrepreneurs” are scoffing at each other’s “business ideas,” both of which we know are total cons.

Billy McFarland is played by American actor Ben Rappaport. In addition to being an alum of Ozark — you know, Julia Garner’s other big Netflix show — Rappaport has appeared in shows like For the People, Outsourced, The Good Wife, and Mr. Robot.  

Who is Billy McFarland and What Was Fyre Festival (Again)?

Whether you’ve been blissfully living under a rock or find it hard to remember any Netflix doc before Tiger King, Billy McFarland is the fraudster behind Fyre Festival, one of the ’10s most hilariously disastrous “festivals.”

McFarland is a New Jersey native who dropped out of college to launch the unsuccessful content sharing network Spling. He later found some success with Magnesis, a “card-based club” that offered members a fancy metal card that came with exclusive perks.

However his downfall came with Fyre Festival. Pitched to folks as the ultimate party getaway, people bought expensive tickets to what they thought would be an exclusive, all-inclusive resort festival to hob nob with superstars and rap stars. Instead, they were stranded in the heat in flimsy tents and suspect scraps for food. McFarland pocketed millions. Two major docuseries premiered in 2019 detailing the debacle. One of these docs is Netflix’s own Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu’s rival docuseries Fyre Fraud.

Billy McFarland is currently serving time in prison for his crimes and is scheduled to be released in August 2023.

Watch Inventing Anna on Netflix