
‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox' Schedule
The infamous murder case and media frenzy is back in the spotlight this year with The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, produced by Amanda Knox herself and Monica Lewinsky, among others. Who better to revisit this story than two of our most famously scorned women?
Does the world want Amanda Knox the person, or Amanda Knox the character? That's the tension she's mining, and monetizing, with her latest memoirs, podcasts, and lectures. If you think you already know her story, she'll tell you that you don't.
The eponymous Knox is played by Tell Me Lies' Grace Van Patten, and the show itself comes from K.J. Steinberg, one of the names behind This Is Us. This eight‑episode limited series premieres on August 20 on Hulu with the first two episodes launching simultaneously, followed by weekly episode drops each Wednesday. The finale is set to air on October 1.
In 2007, Amanda Knox was a 20-year-old student from Seattle spending her junior year abroad in Perugia, Italy. Just weeks into her semester, her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found murdered in their shared apartment. Kercher's throat had been cut.
The Italian police quickly zeroed in on Knox and her boyfriend of one week, Raffaele Sollecito, alongside a local drifter, Rudy Guede. What followed was less a trial than a media circus: Knox's diary entries, sexual history, and nickname 'Foxy Knoxy' became tabloid fodder. The Italian press painted her as a femme fatale, the British media cast her as a heartless killer, and the American press swung between horror and disbelief.
In 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted of murder, sentenced to more than two decades in prison. Guede, tried separately, was convicted and eventually served 13 years. In 2011, their convictions were overturned and Knox returned to Seattle after four years in an Italian prison. But wait! In 2013, Italy's highest court ordered a retrial, and Knox and Sollecito were convicted again. By 2015, Knox and Sollecito were definitively acquitted based on insufficient evidence. The legal whiplash kept the case in headlines for nearly a decade, cementing it as one of the most sensationalized trials of the 21st century.
Stream on Hulu
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Hill
19 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump admin pausing issuance of visas for foreign truck drivers, Rubio says
President Trump's administration is pausing all issuance of worker visas for foreign truck drivers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday, arguing the growing number of international, commercial operators is putting the lives of Americans in danger. 'Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers. The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,' Rubio said in a Thursday post on social platform X. Rubio's announcement comes days after Harjinder Singh, a truck driver, was accused of making an illegal U-turn that killed people around 50 miles north of West Palm Beach. The Department of Homeland Security said this week that Singh, who was arrested for three counts of vehicular homicide, was in the U.S. illegally. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said on Tuesday that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration launched an investigation into the deadly Florida highway crash. Trump penned an executive order in late April requiring all commercial truck drivers operating in the U.S. to be proficient in English. The president designated English as the country's official language in an executive order in March. 'They should be able to read and understand traffic signs, communicate with traffic safety, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station officers,' the White House said in the order at the time. 'Drivers need to provide feedback to their employers and customers and receive related directions in English.' Foreign truckers in the U.S. are usually working on H-2B visas. On Thursday, the State Department confirmed that it is vetting over 55 million U.S. visa holders for possible deportable infractions, including criminal activity, visa overstays and engagement in any form of terrorist activity.' The State Department said last week that it would pause all visas for visitors from the Gaza Strip as it conducts a 'full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days.'


Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Divided court eliminates Trump's half-billion-dollar fine in fraud case
While the court effectively upheld the fraud judgment against the president, several of the justices raised major questions about the case, which was decided by a state trial judge last year. A primary goal of their decision was to allow Trump to move to New York's highest court, giving him another opportunity to challenge the finding that he was a fraudster. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Despite the complexities, Thursday's ruling handed Trump a financial victory and a measure of legal validation. It represented a setback for New York's attorney general, Letitia James, who is one of the president's foremost adversaries and a target of his wide-ranging retribution campaign. The case had been a career-defining victory after she campaigned promising to bring Trump to justice. Advertisement Trump responded on social media Thursday, declaring victory and praising the court for having 'the Courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful Decision.' He added that the case had been 'a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense.' Advertisement Trump's company, the Trump Organization, released a statement saying the case was brought out of political malice for the president and that the ruling 'unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business.' Still, the decision fell short of a full vindication. In denying Trump's bid to throw out the case, the court kept in place the ruling that he had committed fraud, an ignominious distinction for a sitting American president. James, in a statement, said that the court had 'affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud.' James, who pledged to appeal, filed the case against Trump and his family real estate business in 2022, accusing them of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable loan terms. After a months-long trial, the judge overseeing the case ruled last year that Trump was liable for conspiring to commit fraud, denting the mogul image that had enabled his political rise. Thursday's ruling came almost a year after the five judges, from the Appellate Division for the 1st Department, heard oral arguments, a delay that reflected the legal and political complexities of a case against a sitting president. Ultimately, the case was so divisive that the judges failed to form a true majority. Moulton's opinion upholding the case and wiping out the financial penalties received one additional vote, from the presiding justice, Dianne Renwick. Another judge, David Friedman, who has been skeptical of the accusations for years, wanted to throw the case out entirely, believing James had lacked the power to bring it. Two other judges, John Higgitt and Llinet Rosado, concluded that James had the authority to file the case, but wanted to provide Trump a new trial. Arguing that 'a remarkable situation has necessitated a remarkable solution,' they agreed to let the fraud judgment stand so that the case could move to a higher appeals court. They wrote that they did so 'after much consideration, with great reluctance.' Advertisement The four justices who formed the reluctant majority were appointed by Democratic governors. Friedman was appointed by Governor George Pataki, a Republican. In his own lengthy opinion, Friedman pointed out that he and two other judges — a majority — had believed that the judgment against Trump should be thrown out. But the trio could not agree on an effective remedy, allowing the judgment to stand for now. Friedman also blasted James for comments she made while running for office in 2018. She had pledged to investigate Trump, calling his presidency 'illegitimate' and saying she would join with other attorneys general in seeking to remove him from the White House. Even the judges more sympathetic to the attorney general's case agreed that criticism was merited, though they noted that they had already considered Trump's claims of political persecution and rejected them. In the appeal, Trump's lawyers argued that the roughly $450 million judgment — which before Thursday's ruling sat at more than $520 million with interest — was excessive, given that his lenders never lost money, and that the attorney general's office was meddling in private transactions. In Thursday's decision, Moulton agreed that the punishment outstripped the wrongdoing. He concluded that it was 'an excessive fine' barred under the Constitution. He rejected a new trial, however, saying that it is 'difficult to imagine that a trial could proceed while one of the principal defendants, and a central witness, is President of the United States.' Advertisement Moulton also wrote that the evidence clearly demonstrated liability, highlighting volumes of evidence against Trump, his two sons who run the family business and some of the company's top executives. The ruling maintained the result of a case that put Trump's fantastical claims of wealth on trial. But the judges' various disagreements reinforced the importance of any future decision in New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals. When the state judge, Arthur F. Engoron, imposed the half-billion-dollar judgment in February of last year, the eye-popping sum appeared to represent an existential threat to the Trump Organization. Trump's company struggled for weeks to line up a bond that would allow him to appeal the judgment without paying the state. When Trump came up short, the attorney general's office appeared poised to freeze some of Trump's bank accounts, until the appeals court allowed him to post a smaller bond. The court also did not force Trump to pay the penalty while he appealed the case. Much has changed since then, when Trump was still facing criminal indictments as he tried to reclaim the White House. Not only did he win reelection — a victory that effectively eliminated his criminal cases — but he also has recently reaped a windfall from his personal business ventures. His foray into cryptocurrency has been particularly profitable, adding billions of dollars in paper value to his net worth and removing any real threat to his financial stability. The civil fraud trial stemming from James's lawsuit was not decided by a jury. Instead, the power belonged to Engoron, who found after months of testimony that Trump had lied to lenders about the value of his properties. The judge sought to claw back Trump's ill-gotten profits and interest savings. Advertisement The judge also delivered a sweeping array of punishments, including barring Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He banned Trump's adult sons for two years. The appeals court, while eliminating the financial penalties, gave those other punishments the green light. This article originally appeared in


San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
How Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox teamed up to reclaim Knox's narrative
Monica Lewinsky is keenly aware of what it feels like when your name is no longer your own and becomes attached to a character conjured by others. An affair that she had with President Bill Clinton nearly 30 years ago as a White House intern made her an international headline. So, when Lewinsky read that Amanda Knox, another woman whose image precedes her, wanted to adapt her memoir for the screen, she felt she was in a unique position to help. Knox was on a study abroad program in Italy in 2007 when one of her housemates, Meredith Kercher, was killed. She and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito quickly became the prime suspects. The story was a tabloid sensation and Knox was branded Foxy Knoxy. After a lengthy trial, she and Sollecito were convicted of Kercher's murder and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. They were later acquitted and exonerated. Knox has already told her story in two memoirs and it's been dramatized by others. There was a Lifetime movie about the case and she believes the 2021 movie 'Stillwater' starring Matt Damon was unfairly familiar. 'I have a story to tell because I have a mission, and my mission is to help people appreciate what really is going on when justice goes awry,' Knox said about why she entrusted Lewinsky to help tell her story through 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,' a limited series now streaming on Hulu. The show stars Grace Van Patten ('Tell Me Lies'), and both Knox and Lewinsky are among its executive producers. '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 said. Lewinsky was not always in a place to help others reclaim their narrative because her own was too much to bear. She admits to vaguely hearing about Knox's case but didn't have the energy to give it attention. 'I was allergic to cases like this,' Lewinsky said. '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 school would lead to a new beginning and desired to 'have a new identity and go get a job like a normal person.' She said the realization that wasn't going to happen 'was a pretty devastating moment.' In 2014, Lewinsky wrote a personal essay for Vanity Fair and became one of its contributors. She went on to produce a documentary and give a TedTalk called 'The Price of Shame,' addressing cyber-bullying and public-shaming. Educating others provided Lewinsky with a purpose she had been looking for. 'With most everything I do, it feels really important to me that it moves a conversation forward somehow,' said Lewinsky, who now hosts a podcast called 'Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.' By the time they officially began working on 'Twisted Tale,' Lewinsky was in protective mode. The 52-year-old Lewinsky, 14 years older than Knox, wanted to shield her from painful moments. She recalled being particularly worried that Knox would be traumatized by reading the first script. 'It's someone else's interpretation. There's dramatic license,' explained Lewinsky, who said she can still 'have sensitivities' to reading something written about her. Instead, Knox was OK and Lewinsky learned they're 'triggered by different things.' She laughs about it now: 'Amanda's a lot more agreeable than me.' Knox said a part of her story that she wanted to make sure the TV series got right was the interrogation scene. She still describes it as 'the worst experience of my life and a really defining moment in how this whole 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 said she was coerced into signing a confession that she did not understand because of the language barrier. She was not fluent in Italian and did not have a lawyer with her at the time. In that document, Knox wrongly accused a local bar owner of the murder, and she still has a slander conviction because of it. (Knox's lawyers recently filed paperwork to appeal that decision.) Knox has returned to Italy three times since her release from prison. One of those times was to meet with the prosecutor of her case after years of correspondence. Showrunner-creator KJ Stenberg said she had to condense more than 400 pages of their writing back-and-forth for their reunion scene. That meeting ultimately became the framework for the series. 'The scope of this story isn't, 'Here's the bad thing that happened to Amanda, the end.' The scope of the story is Amanda's going back to Italy and to appreciate why she made that choice, we need to go back and revisit everything that leads up to it,' said Knox. Viewers will also see others' perspectives, including Sollecito's, a prison chaplain and confidante, and Knox's mother. It also shows how the investigators and prosecutor reached the conclusion at the time that Knox and Sollecito were guilty. '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's showing all of these people who are going through the same situation and all truly believing they were doing the right thing,' added Van Patten. Knox isn't presented as perfect either in the series. 'I wasn't interested in doing a hagiography of Amanda Knox, nor was Amanda,' said Steinberg. Knox had a hard time adjusting to so-called 'real life' after she was acquitted and returned home to the United States, and that is shown in 'Twisted Tale.' 'I couldn't interact like a normal person with other people. 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,' said Knox, adding the stigma has become 'a huge, like, life-defining problem for me to solve.' Knox said she's learned that there are positives and negatives to her unique situation. 'There are exoneree friends of mine who have been able to move on with a life and be around people who don't know about the worst experience of their life,' she said. 'That's kind of a blessing and a curse. You don't have to explain yourself all the time, but it's a curse because then this thing that was so defining of who you are as a person is something that you maybe feel like you don't know if you should share. 'In my case, I never had that choice.' Knox is now a married mother of two and grateful that her life did not turn out the way that she feared it would while in prison, particularly that she would never have children. '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.'