For nearly twenty years, Amanda Knox has lived under the shadow of a story she didn’t write. To some people, her name is still synonymous with guilt, scandal, and controversy. To others, she is a young woman wrongfully accused, a survivor of both a flawed justice system and a media circus that turned her into a symbol rather than a human being. With the release of Hulu’s The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, she is being given something she has been fighting for all along: the chance to reclaim her own narrative.
The series, which premiered its first two episodes on August 20, is not just another retelling of Meredith Kercher’s murder or the subsequent trials that captivated the world. Instead, it is an attempt to place Knox at the center of her own story, allowing her to exist as more than the caricature invented by tabloids nearly two decades ago. It acknowledges that Knox will never be able to separate herself completely from the tragic death of Kercher, but it also insists that she has the right to be understood as more than “Foxy Knoxy,” the nickname that haunted her for years.
Back in 2007, Knox was a 20-year-old American student studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. Her life changed forever on November 2 of that year, when her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found murdered in the home they shared with two other women. Within days, Knox and her then-boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested. The series captures the swiftness with which suspicion fell upon her. From the moment Kercher’s body was discovered, investigators judged Knox’s demeanor—her willingness to speak, her nervous kisses with her boyfriend, her tendency to appear detached in moments of chaos. What to Knox may have been awkward attempts to cope in a foreign country where she barely spoke the language became, to investigators and the media, proof of her guilt.
Watching the show, you see how quickly a case was constructed against her. Detectives interrogate her aggressively, convinced from the start that she is lying. By the end of the second episode, Knox is not simply questioned but berated, hit, and manipulated into confusion. The drama doesn’t sanitize Knox’s choices either. It shows her mistakes—like doing yoga stretches in a police station at a time when everyone else was consumed by shock and grief. But instead of using these moments as justification for guilt, the series highlights the complexity of being young, far from home, under unbearable pressure, and unable to comprehend the gravity of what is unfolding.
Knox’s journey through the Italian courts was a labyrinth of verdicts and reversals. She was convicted, acquitted, retried, found guilty again, and finally exonerated in 2015. But those legal outcomes only tell part of the story. What lingers is how the world viewed her during those years. Newspapers splashed lurid headlines about her sex life, her personality, her clothes. Television anchors repeated her nickname as if it were her true identity. To the public, she became more myth than person—a femme fatale, a seductress, a manipulator. The facts of the case became secondary to the narrative of Amanda Knox.
This is what makes the new series different. In its opening scene, Knox returns to Italy in 2022 to meet with the very prosecutor who once fought to keep her behind bars. The inclusion of this encounter signals something important: the story is not being told merely as a historical drama, but as an ongoing reality in Knox’s life. Though she has been acquitted, she will forever carry the burden of what happened. As an executive producer, Knox herself insisted on this broader portrayal, ensuring the show didn’t end with the final verdict but instead continued into her life after the trial, into the struggle of living with a reputation she never asked for.
It would be easy to frame the series as a redemption arc, but Knox’s story resists neat packaging. She does not present herself as flawless. The show does not try to erase her quirks or her missteps. Instead, it argues something more radical—that innocence does not require perfection. Knox doesn’t have to be likable to be truthful. She doesn’t have to embody the role of a sympathetic victim to deserve exoneration. She simply has to be human, which she was all along, though much of the world forgot it.
One of the most notable figures involved in the project is Monica Lewinsky, who serves as an executive producer alongside Knox. Lewinsky is no stranger to being defined by a narrative she didn’t control. In the 1990s, she was at the center of one of the most sensational scandals in American history, reduced to an object of ridicule and moral judgment for years. Over time, Lewinsky managed to rebuild her public image by confronting her past, speaking openly about shame, and reframing her experience in her own words. Her involvement in Knox’s story feels fitting, almost poetic.
Lewinsky has said that when she met Knox in 2017, she immediately recognized the pain in her. She saw the desperation of someone trapped inside a box built by media caricature, longing to be seen for who she really was. Although Lewinsky admits their experiences were different in substance, the way both women were treated by the media was strikingly similar. Both were reduced to symbols, stripped of complexity, and turned into public property. It was Lewinsky who first brought Knox’s story to 20th Television after reading a profile of her in The New York Times, believing it deserved to be retold with authenticity.
The collaboration between Knox and Lewinsky feels less like a business arrangement and more like an act of solidarity. It is a statement about women reclaiming their voices in a culture that has historically silenced or distorted them. Lewinsky has shown that it is possible, with time, to challenge the narratives that once defined you. Knox, through this series, is attempting the same.
But reclaiming a story is never simple. There will always be skeptics, people who remain convinced of Knox’s guilt despite Rudy Guede’s conviction for Kercher’s murder. There will be critics who view her attempt to share her story as self-serving or disrespectful to Kercher’s memory. Even Kercher’s own family may feel hurt or uneasy about the show’s existence. These reactions are part of the complicated legacy Knox must live with. Yet, denying her the right to speak would only replicate the silencing that defined her early years in the spotlight.
What stands out in this retelling is the acknowledgement of Knox’s youth at the time of the crime. At just 20 years old, she was thrust into a nightmare far beyond her comprehension. Many viewers, reflecting on their own early twenties, can empathize with how easily they might have faltered under similar pressure. Knox was awkward, naïve, and imperfect—but none of those qualities equate to murder. The tragedy of Kercher’s death should not require another woman to live permanently under suspicion simply because she did not behave as expected.
The cultural fascination with Knox has always said as much about society as it did about her. Why was the world so eager to believe the worst about her? Why did tabloids fixate on her sexuality rather than the evidence of the case? Why did her mannerisms matter more than the fact that another man was eventually convicted? These questions linger beneath the surface of the series, forcing viewers to reckon not only with the miscarriage of justice in Italy but with the broader human tendency to consume women’s lives as entertainment.
For Knox, telling her story now is not about convincing everyone of her innocence. The courts have already spoken, even if some still refuse to accept it. Instead, it is about something deeper—demanding recognition of her humanity. It is about refusing to let a nickname, a media caricature, or a series of misrepresentations dictate the rest of her life.
There is also something striking about the timing. In recent years, there has been a cultural shift in how we view women who were once vilified by the press. Figures like Lewinsky, Britney Spears, and even Pamela Anderson have experienced renewed sympathy as society reexamines the cruelty of media narratives that defined them in the 1990s and 2000s. Knox’s story fits into this broader reevaluation, though hers carries the added weight of wrongful imprisonment and a murder case that still stirs debate.
Watching The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, you are reminded that reclaiming a narrative is both empowering and fragile. Knox can tell her story, but she cannot control how it will be received. Some viewers will empathize with her. Others will remain unconvinced. What matters is that for the first time, she is telling it on her own terms, with her own voice woven into every frame. That in itself is a form of justice, even if imperfect.
In the end, Amanda Knox may never escape the shadow of what happened in Perugia in 2007. The tragedy of Meredith Kercher’s death will always be part of her story, just as the years of wrongful imprisonment and vilification will be. But what this series offers is a reminder that no one should be forever defined by the worst moments of their life, especially when those moments are not of their own making.
Knox does not ask to be loved or admired. She asks only to be understood, to be seen as more than the character invented by prosecutors and tabloids nearly twenty years ago. She may be flawed, complicated, and even unlikable at times, but she is also innocent—a fact that should matter above all else. With The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, she is finally able to claim something that has been denied to her for far too long: her own story.