Monica Lewinsky is keenly conscious of what it seems like when your title is not your individual and turns into connected to a personality conjured by others. An affair that she had with President Clinton practically 30 years in the past as a White Home intern made her a world headline.
So, when Lewinsky learn that Amanda Knox, one other girl whose picture precedes her, needed to adapt her memoir for the display screen, she felt she was in a novel place to assist.
Knox was on a research overseas program in Italy in 2007 when one in every of her housemates, Meredith Kercher, was killed. She and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito rapidly grew to become the prime suspects. The story was a tabloid sensation and Knox was branded Cunning Knoxy. After a prolonged trial, she and Sollecito had been convicted of Kercher’s homicide and sentenced to greater than 20 years in jail; they had been later acquitted and exonerated.
Knox has already informed her story in two memoirs and it has been dramatized by others. There was a Lifetime film in regards to the case and she or he believes the 2021 film “Stillwater” starring Matt Damon was unfairly acquainted. “I’ve a narrative to inform as a result of I’ve a mission, and my mission is to assist folks admire what actually is happening when justice goes awry,” Knox said about why she entrusted Lewinsky to help tell her story through “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.”
“This girl, who has gone by means of her personal model of hell the place the world had diminished her to a punchline impressed me to really feel like perhaps there was a path ahead in my life,” Knox mentioned.
The restricted collection is now streaming on Hulu. Grace Van Patten (“Tell Me Lies”) stars and each Knox and Lewinsky are amongst its govt producers.
Shared however totally different trauma
Lewinsky was not all the time in a spot to assist others reclaim their narrative as a result of her personal was an excessive amount of to bear.
She remembers vaguely listening to about Knox’s case however did not have the power to provide it consideration. “I was allergic to cases like this,” Lewinsky mentioned.
“I had just come out of graduate school at the end of 2006. And 2007 was a very challenging year for me.” She believed graduate faculty would result in a brand new starting and desired to “have a new identity and go get a job like a normal person.” She mentioned the conclusion that wasn’t going to occur “was a reasonably devastating second.”
In 2014, Lewinsky wrote a private essay for Vainness Truthful and have become one in every of its contributors. She went on to provide a documentary and provides a TedTalk known as “The Price of Shame,” addressing cyber-bullying and public-shaming. Educating others offered Lewinsky with a goal she had been in search of. “With most everything I do, it feels really important to me that it moves a conversation forward somehow,” said Lewinsky. She now hosts a podcast called “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.”
By the point they formally started engaged on “Twisted Tale,” Lewinsky was in protecting mode. The 52-year-old Lewinsky, 14 years older than Knox, needed to protect her from painful moments. She recalled being significantly nervous that Knox could be traumatized by studying the primary script.
“It’s someone else’s interpretation. There’s dramatic license,” defined Lewinsky, who mentioned she will be able to nonetheless “have sensitivities” to studying one thing written about her. As a substitute, Knox was OK and Lewinsky discovered they’re “triggered by different things.”
She laughs about it now: “Amanda’s a lot more agreeable than me.”
The interrogation was key
Knox mentioned part of her story that she needed to ensure the TV collection bought proper was the interrogation scene. She nonetheless describes it as “the worst expertise of my life and a very defining second in how this complete case went off the rails.
“I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days. We don’t see that on screen,” she said. Now an advocate for criminal justice reform, Knox hopes viewers are moved by the condensed version and recognize “the emotional truth and the psychological truth of that scenario.”
Knox mentioned she was coerced into signing a confession that she didn’t perceive due to the language barrier. She was not fluent in Italian and didn’t have a lawyer together with her on the time. In that doc, Knox wrongly accused an area bar proprietor of the homicide, and she or he nonetheless has a slander conviction due to it. Knox’s legal professionals not too long ago filed paperwork to enchantment that call.
She believes interrogations ought to have extra transparency “because what happens behind closed doors results in coerced confessions from innocent people to this day. I really wanted to shed a light on that.”
No villains in Knox’s model
Knox has returned to Italy 3 times since her launch from jail. A type of occasions was to fulfill with the prosecutor of her case after years of correspondence. Showrunner-creator KJ Stenberg mentioned she needed to condense greater than 400 pages of their writing back-and-forth for his or her reunion scene. That assembly finally grew to become the framework for the collection.
“The scope of this story isn’t, ‘Here’s the dangerous factor that occurred to Amanda, the top.’ The scope of the story is Amanda’s going again to Italy and to understand why she made that alternative, we have to return and revisit all the pieces that leads as much as it,” mentioned Knox.
Viewers will even see others’ views, together with Sollecito’s, a jail chaplain and confidante, and Knox’s mom. It additionally exhibits how the investigators and prosecutor reached the conclusion on the time that Knox and Sollecito had been responsible.
“We did not want mustache-twirling villains,” said Knox. “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.”
“It is exhibiting all of those people who find themselves going by means of the identical state of affairs and all really believing they had been doing the correct factor,” added Van Patten.
Knox is not offered as good both within the collection. “I wasn’t interested in doing a hagiography of Amanda Knox, nor was Amanda,” mentioned Steinberg.
Knox’s harsh return to life after jail
Knox had a tough time adjusting to so-called “real life” after she was acquitted and returned house to the US. That is proven in “Twisted Tale.”
“I couldn’t interact like a normal person with other people,” said Knox. “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.” She mentioned the stigma has change into “an enormous, like, life-defining downside for me to resolve.”
“People don’t think about the adjustments she had to go through to reinsert herself into normal life, which is still not normal,” mentioned Van Patten.
Knox mentioned she’s discovered that there are positives and negatives to her distinctive state of affairs.
“There are exoneree pals of mine who’ve been in a position to transfer on with a life and be round individuals who don’t know in regards to the worst expertise of their life. That’s type of a blessing and a curse. You don’t have to elucidate your self on a regular basis but it surely’s a curse as a result of then this factor that was so defining of who you’re as an individual is one thing that you just perhaps really feel such as you don’t know in case you ought to share.”
“In my case, I never had that choice.”
Knox is now a married mom of two and grateful that her life didn’t end up the best way that she feared it might whereas in jail, significantly that she would by no means have kids.
“I used to be 22 years outdated once I was given a 26-year jail sentence. I may do the maths,” she mentioned. “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.”
