Julia Garner has dominated our screens in 2022, with a striking turn as a fictionalized version of Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna sandwiched between gutting performances as Ruth Langmore in the two-part final season of Ozark. On the surface, the two characters couldn’t be more different — one is a high-society con artist, the other a drug queenpin who swears like it’s oxygen. But in a new episode of the podcast Skip Intro, Garner tells Krista Smith that she’s imagined what it might be like for Anna and Ruth to meet — and the result is surprising. 

“I think [Ruth and Anna] would judge each other because of how they look and what they’re wearing and their spirits,” she says. “But they like surprising people, so I think they would end up actually loving each other. They both love rap music. I think they would end up falling in love with each other.”

In fact, Garner says that one of the best parts of stepping into Anna’s shoes was literally that: the fashion. After four seasons as the sartorially challenged Ruth, she relished the chance at a glamorous, high-fashion moment — right down to Anna’s prison underwear. “I love Ruth, but her wardrobe is, you know... it’s Ruth,” she says, adding that her favorite look as Anna was one that allowed her to feel utterly transformed. 

Tina Rowden/Netflix

Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

“My favorite look [from Inventing Anna] would probably be... I had the brown wig with the glasses and I had this Alia dress on, it was like a baby doll dress,” Garner recalls. “Anna had that exact same dress. And I felt the most like Anna in that dress. I had a super padded bra and I didn't feel like me, at all.”

Of course, Ruth did finally get a glow-up of her own in the Ozark series finale. Yes, we’re talking about that white dress. “I think it was a [Halston] dress,” Garner says, adding that saying goodbye to the character has been bittersweet. “Ruth does feel like a part of me. [Ozark] changed my life professionally, but it’s also changed my life personally. She gave me a sense of confidence that I’ve never had. I’m grateful that I played her. Not only because it was an amazing part, but because I got something that you don't get every day, which is a sense of true confidence.”

Still, one major difference sets the two characters apart: Ruth is an entirely fictional character, while Inventing Anna’s version of Anna Delvey is based on a very real person: Anna Sorokin, who racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of charges at New York City hotels and banks while posing as a German heiress until her arrest in 2017. In 2019, Sorokin was convicted of second-degree grand larceny, theft of services and one count of first-degree attempted grand larceny and sent to Albion Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where Garner visited her before filming. The experience was crucial to her understanding of the character, Garner says, and allowed her to view Anna in all her complexity, rather than simply words on a page. 

“I knew that I wasn’t going to get answers that I wanted to get, just reading about her,” Garner says. “She was hilarious and she’s extremely clever. And also very terrifying, all at the same time.” Hey — that sounds a whole lot like Ruth. 

For more great celebrity interviews, check out Skip Intro on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.