Amanda Knox knows she's the story. It took motherhood to want to tell it on her own terms.

Most people reconnect with former classmates at milestone reunions. Maybe they meet for an occasional coffee when they’re back in their hometown. When I saw Amanda Knox for the first time since our high school graduation, our reconnection was a little different. There we were, talking face-to-face over Zoom about Hulu’s new scripted series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, inspired by 16 pivotal years of her life.

Knox was keeping a low profile when our 10-year reunion came around in Seattle in 2015, afraid to be in public spaces. She had just learned that Italy’s high court would finally bring some closure to a case that began in 2007, when she was arrested on a charge of murder in the death of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher, her roommate while studying abroad in Perugia.

“The first letters that I ever got in prison were from people from [our high school],” she tells me, her voice softening as we begin our conversation. “I’m going to get emotional right now, because everyone else in my life — my parents, my college friends — they were all just like, ‘Oh, Amanda’s going to get out any day now.’ But I think [our school] had this sort of established sense of how to respond to a crisis, and we’re going to do it collectively. Like, we know this girl. To receive those messages when I was in the middle of this insane story that was blowing up around me? That was a huge relief.”

To call her story insane is an understatement.

Knox was convicted of murder and spent four years in prison before she was acquitted in 2011. The case took several twists: In 2014, an appeals court reversed that acquittal and reconvicted her. That second guilty verdict, for Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, was thrown out in 2015 by Italy’s highest court, ending the legal saga. Rudy Guede, whose DNA was found at the crime scene, remains the only person convicted of Kercher’s murder.

Through it all, Knox says, her story was often misrepresented, both in the media and by the public. The Hulu series, which premieres on Aug. 20, is her attempt to tell it herself onscreen.

The Lewinsky effect

The series itself came together at a pivotal moment in Knox’s life. She had just given birth to daughter Eureka in 2021 and was struggling with how to reconcile the trauma she had endured with her new role as a mother.

“I was sitting with this feeling of needing to be OK,” Knox says, explaining she had to confront her past to avoid “consciously or unconsciously passing on this dark cloud that had been hovering over me onto my children.” (She also shares son Echo with husband Christopher Robinson.)

She began corresponding with Giuliano Mignini, the lead prosecutor who worked for years to get both her and Sollecito locked up. The two have since formed an unlikely friendship, and Knox says she’s forgiven him. This is a big plot point in The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, a show that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for a different, unexpected friendship Knox formed with Monica Lewinsky.

Knox first met Lewinsky in 2017, when she was feeling “very small and diminished” and that people still didn’t believe in her innocence. The two bonded immediately.

“Monica had been reduced to a punch line, just like I had,” Knox says. “Seeing how she emerged, speaking out, writing, advocating — it made me realize there was a path forward for my own story.”

Lewinsky reached out to Knox shortly after Eureka was born. “[Monica] said, ‘I think it’s time to tell your story. I know you want to on your own terms and in your own way. We can do it together.’”

Knox wrote her first memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, in 2013, and her second book, Free: My Search for Meaning, came out in March. But a scripted series is a different challenge, offering a chance to show the emotional nuances and psychological complexity that words alone can’t always capture.

With Lewinsky’s guidance, Knox finally felt ready.

“She wasn’t just like, ‘Here’s a horrible thing that happened to a girl and here’s a courtroom drama.’ It’s a more personal story of who you were before a traumatic event enters your life, and who you are after. How do you make sense of it? What do you do to reclaim a sense of ownership over your own life? That’s what the [show] is about,” Knox, who produced the series alongside Lewinsky, says. “That’s why we frame it the way we do in the show: I’m going back to Italy to confront my prosecutor.”

Aside from Lewinsky, Knox credits creator and showrunner K.J. Steinberg for guiding the series with sensitivity and ensuring the story was told with both accuracy and heart.

“[Steinberg] completely understood the stakes. Her vision meshed with my own, and we were able to create this story together that was not just a rehashing of a terrible thing,” Knox says. “It was something that honored all the people involved ... I feel really lucky to be on this journey with so many incredibly talented people who want to get it right.”

Facing the shadow

After Kercher was found dead, police interrogated Knox for a total of 53 hours over five days. Part of the prosecution’s evidence against her was a signed confession, which she says was the result of coercive tactics. For Knox, one of the most emotionally charged sequences in the series centers on the interrogation. It was a scene she was “really concerned” about.

“A lot of people have mistaken notions about what an interrogation is really like,” she says. “You think of CSI, but really, these things happen behind closed doors. Those of us who enter into them are unprepared because we don’t know how it really works.”

The scene depicting the questioning is condensed but powerful.

“I had to show a version that still trails the psychological journey both I and my interrogators were on. They’re convincing themselves of a story while trying to convince me to submit to it. That was crucial. As someone now who’s an advocate for criminal justice reform, I want people to viscerally understand that experience,” Knox says.

The weight of that scene hit her hard, even during production. “I watched when we filmed it. It was over and over, 10 hours a day for two days, from all different angles. By the time we were done, I just wept — not just because I was triggered, but because I was relieved that we had gotten it right,” she says.

As an executive producer, Knox had significant creative input, including a say in casting and cowriting the series finale. “Isn’t Grace Van Patten stunning? She was so good,” Knox says of the actress who plays her. “She could bring in the whimsy, the gravitas and the heart.”

While it was crucial for Knox that Van Patten nail the facets of her personality, equally important was capturing the depth and vulnerability of Knox as a mother. It’s a role that has shaped how she has approached every decision in the past four years.

When Knox gave birth to Eureka, the first words she said to her daughter were: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m your mom.”

Knox is used to living with a shadow, and she knows that shadow will follow her kids as well. Millions of people still assume she’s guilty of a crime she was acquitted of, and one day, her kids will read all about it online.

Knox says the decision to tell her story now in this way is about “wanting to make sure these things don’t happen again so that someone else’s daughter out there [doesn’t] get treated the way that I got treated,” adding, “and the way Monica got treated.”

“Monica and I both are really concerned about trying to do right so that when the next person comes along, they have a less hard time,” she says.

Legacies intertwined

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox isn’t just about her own story.

“It’s about honoring everyone whose life was upended,” Knox says. “Two girls studied abroad in Perugia, Italy, and only one of them got to go home. Only one of them survived.”

Knox then becomes emotional.

"Meredith and I ... the way that I look back on it to this day, is that I didn’t know her for that long. But for better or for worse, I’m carrying her legacy alongside mine,” she says.

Kercher’s parents have both died, and Knox never reconciled with them. She hopes to connect with Kercher’s siblings but doesn’t know if that will happen. Kercher’s sister has been vocal in expressing her disappointment that it’s Kercher’s story that has been lost in all of this for nearly two decades.

“I really felt like it was so important to do [Meredith] justice in the show in a way that it hadn’t been done in the past,” Knox says. “There are people to this day who don’t even remember her name, much less the name of the person who actually murdered her.”

Guede’s 30-year sentence was reduced on appeal to 16 years, and he was released from prison in 2021. Headlines still only focused on one person. “Amanda Knox’s roommate’s killer freed,” read one.

“That is a sign that this story has not been told right,” Knox says. “And it was one that I am trying to correct.”