Most individuals reconnect with former classmates at milestone reunions. Perhaps they meet for an occasional espresso once they’re again of their hometown. Once I noticed Amanda Knox for the primary time since our highschool commencement, our reconnection was a bit of completely different. There we have been, speaking face-to-face over Zoom about Hulu’s new scripted collection The Twisted Story of Amanda Knox, impressed by 16 pivotal years of her life.
Knox was conserving a low profile when our 10-year reunion got here round in Seattle in 2015, afraid to be in public areas. She had simply realized that Italy’s excessive court docket would lastly carry some closure to a case that started in 2007, when she was arrested on a cost of homicide within the dying of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, her roommate whereas finding out overseas in Perugia.
“The primary letters that I ever acquired in jail have been from folks from [our high school],” she tells me, her voice softening as we start our dialog. “I’m going to get emotional proper now, as a result of everybody else in my life — my dad and mom, my school associates — they have been all identical to, ‘Oh, Amanda’s going to get out any day now.’ However I believe [our school] had this form of established sense of how to answer a disaster, and we’re going to do it collectively. Like, we all know this lady. To obtain these messages after I was in the midst of this insane story that was blowing up round me? That was an enormous aid.”
To name her story insane is an understatement.
Knox was convicted of homicide and spent 4 years in jail earlier than she was acquitted in 2011. The case took a number of twists: In 2014, an appeals court docket reversed that acquittal and reconvicted her. That second responsible verdict, for Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, was thrown out in 2015 by Italy’s highest court docket, ending the authorized saga. Rudy Guede, whose DNA was discovered on the crime scene, stays the one particular person convicted of Kercher’s homicide.
By way of all of it, Knox says, her story was typically misrepresented, each within the media and by the general public. The Hulu collection, which premieres on Aug. 20, is her try to inform it herself onscreen.
The Lewinsky impact
The collection itself got here collectively at a pivotal second in Knox’s life. She had simply given start to daughter Eureka in 2021 and was battling find out how to reconcile the trauma she had endured together with her new function as a mom.
“I used to be sitting with this sense of needing to be OK,” Knox says, explaining she needed to confront her previous to keep away from “consciously or unconsciously passing on this darkish cloud that had been hovering over me onto my youngsters.” (She additionally shares son Echo with husband Christopher Robinson.)
She started corresponding with Giuliano Mignini, the lead prosecutor who labored for years to get each her and Sollecito locked up. The 2 have since shaped an unlikely friendship, and Knox says she’s forgiven him. This can be a large plot level in The Twisted Story of Amanda Knox, a present that wouldn’t have occurred if it weren’t for a distinct, surprising friendship Knox shaped with Monica Lewinsky.
Knox first met Lewinsky in 2017, when she was feeling “very small and diminished” and that folks nonetheless didn’t imagine in her innocence. The 2 bonded instantly.
“Monica had been lowered to a punch line, identical to I had,” Knox says. “Seeing how she emerged, talking out, writing, advocating — it made me understand there was a path ahead for my very own story.”
Lewinsky reached out to Knox shortly after Eureka was born. “[Monica] mentioned, ‘I believe it’s time to inform your story. I do know you wish to by yourself phrases and in your personal method. We are able to do it collectively.’”
Knox wrote her first memoir, Ready to Be Heard, in 2013, and her second ebook, Free: My Seek for Which means, got here out in March. However a scripted collection is a distinct problem, providing an opportunity to indicate the emotional nuances and psychological complexity that phrases alone can’t all the time seize.
With Lewinsky’s steering, Knox lastly felt prepared.
“She wasn’t identical to, ‘Right here’s a horrible factor that occurred to a woman and right here’s a courtroom drama.’ It’s a extra private story of who you have been earlier than a traumatic occasion enters your life, and who you might be after. How do you make sense of it? What do you do to reclaim a way of possession over your personal life? That’s what the [show] is about,” Knox, who produced the collection alongside Lewinsky, says. “That’s why we body it the way in which we do within the present: I’m going again to Italy to confront my prosecutor.”
A scene from The Twisted Story of Amanda Knox. (Adrienn Szabó/Disney)
Except for Lewinsky, Knox credit creator and showrunner Ok.J. Steinberg for guiding the collection with sensitivity and making certain the story was informed with each accuracy and coronary heart.
“[Steinberg] fully understood the stakes. Her imaginative and prescient meshed with my very own, and we have been capable of create this story collectively that was not only a rehashing of a horrible factor,” Knox says. “It was one thing that honored all of the folks concerned … I really feel actually fortunate to be on this journey with so many extremely gifted individuals who wish to get it proper.”
Dealing with the shadow
After Kercher was discovered lifeless, police interrogated Knox for a complete of 53 hours over 5 days. A part of the prosecution’s proof towards her was a signed confession, which she says was the results of coercive ways. For Knox, one of the crucial emotionally charged sequences within the collection facilities on the interrogation. It was a scene she was “actually involved” about.
“Lots of people have mistaken notions about what an interrogation is actually like,” she says. “You consider CSI, however actually, these items occur behind closed doorways. These of us who enter into them are unprepared as a result of we don’t know the way it actually works.”
The scene depicting the questioning is condensed however highly effective.
“I needed to present a model that also trails the psychological journey each I and my interrogators have been on. They’re convincing themselves of a narrative whereas attempting to persuade me to undergo it. That was essential. As somebody now who’s an advocate for prison justice reform, I would like folks to viscerally perceive that have,” Knox says.
The load of that scene hit her onerous, even throughout manufacturing. “I watched once we filmed it. It was time and again, 10 hours a day for 2 days, from all completely different angles. By the point we have been executed, I simply wept — not simply because I used to be triggered, however as a result of I used to be relieved that we had gotten it proper,” she says.
As an govt producer, Knox had vital artistic enter, together with a say in casting and cowriting the collection finale. “Isn’t Grace Van Patten beautiful? She was so good,” Knox says of the actress who performs her. “She might carry within the whimsy, the gravitas and the guts.”
Grace Van Patten stars as Knox within the new Hulu present. (Andrea Miconi/Disney)
Whereas it was essential for Knox that Van Patten nail the aspects of her character, equally essential was capturing the depth and vulnerability of Knox as a mom. It’s a job that has formed how she has approached each resolution up to now 4 years.
When Knox gave start to Eureka, the primary phrases she mentioned to her daughter have been: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m your mother.”
Knox is used to residing with a shadow, and she or he is aware of that shadow will comply with her youngsters as effectively. Hundreds of thousands of individuals nonetheless assume she’s responsible of against the law she was acquitted of, and at some point, her youngsters will learn all about it on-line.
Knox says the choice to inform her story now on this method is about “wanting to ensure these items don’t occur once more in order that another person’s daughter on the market [doesn’t] get handled the way in which that I acquired handled,” including, “and the way in which Monica acquired handled.”
“Monica and I each are actually involved about attempting to do proper in order that when the subsequent particular person comes alongside, they’ve a much less onerous time,” she says.
Legacies intertwined
The Twisted Story of Amanda Knox isn’t nearly her personal story.
“It’s about honoring everybody whose life was upended,” Knox says. “Two ladies studied overseas in Perugia, Italy, and solely one in all them acquired to go residence. Solely one in all them survived.”
Knox then turns into emotional.
“Meredith and I … the way in which that I look again on it to today, is that I didn’t know her for that lengthy. However for higher or for worse, I’m carrying her legacy alongside mine,” she says.
Kercher’s dad and mom have each died, and Knox by no means reconciled with them. She hopes to attach with Kercher’s siblings however doesn’t know if that can occur. Kercher’s sister has been vocal in expressing her disappointment that it’s Kercher’s story that has been misplaced in all of this for practically twenty years.
“I actually felt prefer it was so essential to do [Meredith] justice within the present in a method that it hadn’t been executed up to now,” Knox says. “There are folks to today who don’t even bear in mind her identify, a lot much less the identify of the one that truly murdered her.”
Guede’s 30-year sentence was lowered on enchantment to 16 years, and he was launched from jail in 2021. Headlines nonetheless solely centered on one particular person. “Amanda Knox’s roommate’s killer freed,” learn one.
“That may be a signal that this story has not been informed proper,” Knox says. “And it was one which I’m attempting to appropriate.”
