There is a Pepper Smith in every city
Do you recollect the number of times you met a strange person in a party or an event with an unusual accent, with a sartorial dressing sense and name-dropping some of the most influential people in town? Well, if you have, then you have indeed encountered a Pepper Smith. Pepper Smith is a character on the Riverdale spin-off show, Katy Keene. Played by Julia Chan, Pepper Smith is a supposed blogger and gossip columnist who’s an IT-girl and knows everyone who matters in New York. Pepper Smith has big dreams and plans to open an Andy Warhol Factory type of a place in New York, but little do we know her plans are not as easy as they may look. For once Pepper Smith is a scamster who claims to be an heiress from Hongkong, but is in fact, the adopted daughter of a doorman in New York.
The Pepper Smiths we know, also claim to know everyone who’s somebody. Geddit? Pepper Smiths are the ‘ life of the parties’, boast of hailing from influential families, keep on name-dropping and have an air of elusiveness and mysticism around them. However, no one really knows what they do for a living or where they live. You will see their social media pages with a lot of followers and some of their pictures are with celebrities or influential people. They get invites to all the happening parties in the city and are even on guestlists of cool events. The number of times they mention to be ‘entrepreneurs’, yet be totally vociferous about socially relevant issues. If you stalk their social media check-ins, you can see how they spend their nights partying and their days at some charity. Their weekends are a mash-up of being elite socialites and also volunteering for charities. You will also notice, how little you know about their backstories or background or education or families. They are always shrouded in mysteries, yet you don’t know how is it that people seem to like having them around. The reason? They are smooth-talkers and are so convincing that you might as well be eating out of their hands. They always talk about ‘passion projects’ and being on the lookout for potential ‘investors’. Some might even find people to invest in their passion projects. You will always be wondering what is it exactly they do that earns them a living as they live life quite lavishly. You will see how they are always dining in the finest of restaurants and wearing labels, yet you never realise how do they manage it all. Chances are, they could very well be mooching off someone. Like in the show Katy Keene, Pepper Smith dates a hotel employee so she can continue living in the posh hotel without paying a single dime. But are we saying all Pepper Smiths are women? Oh hell no. There are some men who have pulled off cons like these too.
In the show Pepper Smith is shown to be extremely kind and helpful towards her friends, yet she puts Katy’s job on the line when she steals an expensive purse to pay-off her debtors. Some of these people might genuinely be helpful and kind and may always offer an helping hand to everyone, but never forget, not everyone who helps you is a friend. For them it is a way to gain trust of people so they can later hoodwink. The character after all, has been loosely inspired by a real person, Anna Delvey (real name Anna Sorokin).
Sorokin’s story went viral after The Cut published a piece on her in 2018 detailing her various schemes to pose as a German heiress without actually having any money. Like Pepper, Sorokin racked up tens of thousands in hotel bills and skipped out before paying. She also seemingly “knew everyone,” and was trying to launch an art-focused club in a multi-million dollar space in Manhattan. That sounds a lot like Pepper’s dream of opening The Pepper Plant, an Andy Warhol Factory-type of space for artists.
Sorokin was recently sentenced to four to 12 years in prison and fined over $200,000. She also faces deportation to Russia following the completion of her sentence. We wonder if the Pepper Smiths around us will also face similar punishments.
