Who was the real Chase in Inventing Anna?
Anna Delvey’s boyfriend Chase Sikorski in Inventing Anna is based on her real-life relationship with Hunter Lee Soik. In the show, Chase is, essentially, a clout-chasing tech bro who develops an app called Wake. In the show, Chase hosts a Ted Talk explaining how Wake puts your dreams into the Cloud. The parallels weren’t a coincidence: Soik developed an app called Shadow and gave a Ted Talk on the app, which lets you record your dreams into a cloud and communicate with others to compare, contrast and discuss them. However, according to The Cut, the app never actually materialized beyond the concept stage. You can view Soik’s 2013 Ted Talk below.
Who is Hunter Lee Soik?
Soik, like Chase, is a tech entrepreneur who developed and promoted an app to “cloud-source” dreams. He began his career as a photographer and a model and actor and had a role in a Coca-Cola commercial, The New Yorker reports. He then launched his own production company, working with brands including Vans and Stella McCartney, as well as on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne tour in 2011. It was on his first vacation after that tour, he says, that he developed the idea for Shadow. “The first week, I slept more than I was awake,” he recalled to The New Yorker. “One day, from the clock I thought I had slept two hours, and I had actually slept twenty-six. Sleeping four and five hours a night, I hadn’t had dreams, but I started dreaming again. I assumed I would be going back to the grinding life I had been leading, so I wanted to save these dreams. I looked for an app, and there wasn’t one.” There still isn’t one. In 2014, Fast Companysaid in a profile, “Soik lives out of temporarily rented homes in Berlin, San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles—often found via Airbnb—and wears only black.”
Where is Anna Delvey’s boyfriend Hunter Lee Soik from?
The New Yorker reports that Soik was born in Korea. He was then adopted and raised in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, before moving to California as an adult.
How did Hunter Lee Soik and Anna Delvey meet?
Though the exact machinations of their first meeting aren’t publicly known, Delvey and Soik are said to have met sometime around 2014, per a post on her Instagram, and insiders allege that he helped Delvey social-climb. “Hunter is the person who got her into the scene. He is a social person globally,” a source told Page Six. “No one knew what he did, but he was always giving advice on how to climb the corporate ladder.” Another insider said, “He’s connected to a ton of very social people in the tech space.”
Are Anna Delvey and Hunter Lee Soik still together?
Delvey and Soik aren’t a couple any longer. The Cut reported of the pair, “For about two years, they’d been kind of like a team, showing up in places frequented by the itinerant wealthy, living out of fancy hotels and hosting scene-y dinners where the Futurist talked up his app and Delvey spoke of the private club she wanted to open.” The pair split in 2016 when Soik reportedly move to the United Arab Emirates and Delvey began her furthering her quest to climb up the New York City social ladder. A source told Page Sixthat no one really mourned the end of Soik and Delvey’s relationship, griping, “Anna and her boyfriend were not glamorous, they were just annoying. She was rude and talked s**t about people. She was not nice to people. The people who liked hanging out with her were the ones impressed by her attitude … She met famous people briefly, but these people weren’t her friends. She called people constantly. She always wanted a favor. She wanted to party and meet rich people.”
Where is Hunter Lee Soik now?
Soik is currently listed on LinkedIn as founder and executive chairperson of ensō group in Hong Kong, though the company’s page isn’t active. Next, catch up on everything you need to know about Inventing Anna.
