When Hulu’s new limited series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, premiered in August 2025, it wasn’t just another retelling of a notorious true crime saga. This time, the woman at the center of the whirlwind—Amanda Knox—wasn’t just a character; she was an executive producer, determined to reclaim her own narrative. And in a twist that caught many by surprise, she was joined in this mission by Monica Lewinsky, another woman whose life had been defined and distorted by relentless global scrutiny.
For Monica Lewinsky, the experience of losing control over her own story is all too familiar. Almost thirty years ago, her affair with President Bill Clinton as a White House intern exploded into an international scandal, making her name synonymous with public shaming. According to the Associated Press, Lewinsky recalled, “I was allergic to cases like this. I had just come out of graduate school at the end of 2006. And 2007 was a very challenging year for me.” The emotional toll was so great that she initially avoided stories like Knox’s altogether. But when Lewinsky learned that Amanda Knox wanted to adapt her memoir for the screen, she felt uniquely qualified to help. “This woman, who has gone through her own version of hell where the world had diminished her to a punchline, inspired me to feel like maybe there was a path forward in my life,” Knox told the AP.
Amanda Knox’s ordeal began in 2007, when she was a college student studying abroad in Italy. Her housemate, Meredith Kercher, was murdered, and Knox, along with her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, quickly became the prime suspects. The case was a tabloid sensation—Knox was branded “Foxy Knoxy,” and lurid headlines followed her every move. After a lengthy trial, both were convicted of Kercher’s murder and sentenced to over 20 years in prison. Years later, they were acquitted and exonerated, but the damage to Knox’s reputation was already done. As BuzzFeed notes, the series follows “Amanda’s relentless fight to prove her innocence and reclaim her freedom and examines why authorities and the world stood so firmly in judgment.”
Knox has told her story before, in two memoirs and through the lens of others—there was even a Lifetime movie about the case, and Knox has said the 2021 film Stillwater starring Matt Damon felt uncomfortably familiar. But The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is different. Streaming on Hulu, the series stars Grace Van Patten as Knox, with both Knox and Lewinsky serving as executive producers. Showrunner KJ Stenberg and Knox were determined to create a series that wasn’t just about reliving trauma, but about understanding the complex web of perspectives that led to one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in recent memory.
One of the most harrowing elements of Knox’s story—and a focal point of the series—is her interrogation by Italian police. “I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days. We don’t see that on screen,” Knox explained to the AP. The experience, she said, was “the worst experience of my life and a really defining moment in how this whole case went off the rails.” Knox was not fluent in Italian and did not have a lawyer present. Under intense pressure, she was coerced into signing a confession she didn’t understand, wrongly accusing a local bar owner of the murder. That confession still haunts her: Knox’s lawyers have recently filed paperwork to appeal her slander conviction stemming from that document. She hopes the series will help viewers recognize “the emotional truth and the psychological truth of that scenario,” and spark conversations about the need for greater transparency in police interrogations. “What happens behind closed doors results in coerced confessions from innocent people to this day. I really wanted to shed a light on that,” Knox said.
For Lewinsky, working on the series was a chance to put her hard-won resilience to use, but it wasn’t always easy. She admitted to the AP that she was “in protective mode,” worried about how Knox would react to seeing her trauma dramatized. “It’s someone else’s interpretation. There’s dramatic license,” Lewinsky explained, adding that she can still “have sensitivities” to reading things written about her. But Knox surprised her: “Amanda’s a lot more agreeable than me,” Lewinsky laughed.
Rather than casting anyone as a villain, the series strives to show the humanity of everyone involved—from Knox and Sollecito to the investigators, prosecutors, and even a prison chaplain. As Knox told the AP, “We did not want mustache-twirling villains. We wanted the audience to come away from the story thinking, ‘I can relate to every single person in this perfect storm.’ That, to me, was so, so important because I did not want to do the harm that had been done to me in the past.” This approach required nuance and empathy, even for those who had once been her adversaries. Knox has returned to Italy three times since her release, including one visit to meet the prosecutor who led the case against her—a meeting that, according to showrunner Stenberg, became the framework for the series.
The show also doesn’t shy away from depicting Knox’s struggles after her acquittal. Returning to the United States, she found herself unable to interact “like a normal person with other people.” She recalled to the AP, “I went back to school and there were students who were taking pictures of me in class and posting them to social media with really unkind commentary.” The stigma, she said, became “a huge, like, life-defining problem for me to solve.” Grace Van Patten, who portrays Knox, noted, “People don’t think about the adjustments she had to go through to reinsert herself into normal life, which is still not normal.”
Despite the pain, Knox has found meaning in her experience. Now a married mother of two, she reflects on the life she feared she’d never have. “I was 22 years old when I was given a 26-year prison sentence. I could do the math,” she said. “So every single day when I am with my children, I am reminded that this might not have happened. I don’t care if I’m exhausted and I’m overwhelmed, this is what life is all about.”
With The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, both Knox and Lewinsky have taken control of their stories, offering a rare, inside look at what happens when justice goes awry and the world rushes to judgment. The series is more than a retelling—it’s a reclamation, and a reminder that behind every headline is a human being fighting to be heard.
