Amanda Knox Sends Message to 'SNL'
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Amanda Knox's tongue-in-cheek post about one day appearing on Saturday Night Live has gone viral on social media.
Newsweek reached out to Knox's representative and NBC via email on Wednesday for comment.
Why It Matters
Knox, now 38, garnered worldwide attention in 2007 after she was accused of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, during a study abroad program in Perugia, Italy. She spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before her conviction was overturned, and she was exonerated in 2015.
In the days after Kercher's murder, Knox falsely accused her boss, Patrick Lumumba, of the killing, and he spent two weeks in prison. At the time, she had signed statements to police, though she later questioned her accusation in a handwritten note. Knox was convicted of slander and received a three-year sentence.
What To Know
On Monday, Knox took to X to speak out about the nickname she received at the height of her fame.
"When I was twenty years old, I became a symbol. I did not ask for it. I did not understand it. I certainly did not benefit from it," she told her 161,200 followers on the platform in a lengthy thread. "I became a caricature of a person: 'Foxy Knoxy.'"
"An archetype: The seductress, the devil with the face of an angel, the ice queen, the remorseless murderess. My name and face had become a totem for society's anxieties about sex, youth, and femininity," she said in a subsequent post.
Amanda Knox (center) is escorted by police upon her arrival at a court hearing in Perugia, Italy, on September 26, 2008.
Amanda Knox (center) is escorted by police upon her arrival at a court hearing in Perugia, Italy, on September 26, 2008.
Federico Zirilli/AFP via Getty Images
"Foxy Knoxy" was coined by British and Italian media. In 2009, Knox was voted "Woman of the Year" in Italy by a television news poll.
In response to her post, X user @LordOfMundane wrote: "And then you became a Supreme Court Justice!" The user included side-by-side photos of Knox and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
"Just saying, I'm still available, SNL," Knox responded, appearing to agree with their resemblance. At the time of publication, Knox's post had racked up 194,700 views, 3,500 likes and 115 comments.
What People Are Saying
In the replies underneath Knox's X post, many encouraged Saturday Night Live to take her up on her offer to play Barrett.
X user @deltamagnet wrote: "Take a girl up on a dare, SNL!"
@wga2557 wrote: "Double dare SNL!"
@IAm_THEPaulina wrote: "OMG - @nbcsnl."
@blueyedcole wrote: "@nbcsnl LET THIS WOMAN DO SOMETHING HILARIOUS."
@John_Nez_Artist wrote: "Kind of uncanny... a match!"
@kirkjason12 wrote: "That would be awesome!!"
@1Lambinator wrote: "Wow! Spot on!"
@barrydorsey wrote: "This would be epic."
What Happens Next
Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays on NBC at 11:30 p.m. ET and is also available to stream on Peacock.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
UPI
22 minutes ago
- UPI
Lily James explores an actor's loneliness in 'Finally Dawn'
1 of 5 | Lily James, seen at the 2023 Fashion Awards in London, stars in "Finally Dawn." File Photo by Rune Hellestad/UPI | License Photo LOS ANGELES, July 17 (UPI) -- Lily James says she related to the themes of loneliness in her new film, Finally Dawn, in theaters Friday. James, 36, plays fictional 1950s Hollywood movie star Josephine Esperanto. Josephine takes an Italian extra, Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci), under her wing on the set of a Roman epic, and brings her to an all-night afterparty. In a recent interview with UPI, James said Josephine is a cautionary tale for investing too much of one's life in a persona. "In Josephine Esperanto, I was exploring what that loneliness looks like," James said. "I don't think she knows who she is anymore and is lonely." Josephine does not open up with that kind of vulnerability to Mimosa, nor to her co-star (Joe Keery) or director (Willem Dafoe). James said that kind of loneliness is not limited to celebrities. "That's a human problem," James said. "How do we find real happiness? How do we not be lonely? How do we find validation from within instead of without? So it's quite profound." James said she too struggles with balancing her career with her private life. She had her first role in 2010 on the BBC series Just William. Her other credits include playing Disney's Cinderella, the musical Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, and portraying real-life celebrity Pamela Anderson in the FX series Pam & Tommy. "I think part of loving what you do is a gift and a curse because it does consume me," James said. "Especially in art, those boundaries become really blurred because you inhabit another character. You inhabit another world alongside these actors and it's a magical world but it can really take over your life." One way James helped divide her career and real life was by taking a stage name. She took James as her professional name, after her father, Jamie Thompson. In private, she is still Lily Thompson. James suspects Josephine Esperanto is a stage name too, though Josephine seemingly lives it full time. "There's sort of you and the actor version, kind of a healthy boundary there," James said. "So I think stage names are kind of great." There is only one scene in Finally Dawn in which Josephine lets her guard down. Mimosa is not supposed to witness it, but she wanders in unbeknownst to Josephine. "I think you see a woman at the end sort of undressing and unraveling, taking the armor of her life, this pretend character that she's built up," James said, adding that Josephine "realizes, 'What is there left underneath? I haven't nurtured it and I haven't given it the time it deserves.' There's something deeply, deeply melancholic and Shakespearean about that." So too are her plans for Mimosa, who is just a local girl and did not ask to join in Hollywood debauchery. "I think she wants to birth Mimosa into a star and destroy her right at the same time," James said. "There's cruelty and love, a maternal instinct and a kind of destruction." To capture the performance of a '40s movies star, James studied real actors like Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Monica Vitti. "I really just tried to enjoy watching their skill and elegance and beauty," she said. James recently wrapped filming Cliffhanger, a re-imagining of the 1993 Sylvester Stallone action hit. She co-stars with Pierce Brosnan under director Jaume Collet-Serra. "I'm now obsessed with climbing, the athletic side of it, but also the meditative state you have to go into when you're climbing," she said. "I was in the Dolemites climbing for six weeks with a sort of skeleton crew scaling mountains. We had to shut down multiple times because of snowstorms. It was a very bonding experience." She also hopes to revisit her character in Edgar Wright's Baby Driver. Wright has confirmed he wrote a sequel, but James is supportive of the director's forthcoming new film. "I've seen a script," she said of the Baby Driver sequel. "Mainly, I'm just so excited about Running Man with Glen [Powell]. That trailer is absolutely phenomenal. I was completely blown away by it so I'm so excited to see that."
Newsweek
22 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Fact Check: Are California Tow Trucks Targeting ICE Vehicles?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Multiple viral videos on TikTok claim California tow truck drivers are banding together to stymy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation efforts, but is the story real? User ABA_Online777 drew more than four million views within three days of a video in which a tow truck hauled off a white SUV in Oxnard, California, saying that "a bunch" of tow truck drivers were "following" ICE and towing them, "the minute that they park" illegally. User dj36367, meanwhile, cited a viral video from user Georgia_Speaks_Out who made a similar statement using the same clip. The claims, however, appear to be exaggerated. Stock image: Person wearing 'Police ICE' jacket. Stock image: Person wearing 'Police ICE' jacket. Photo by Lawrey / Getty Images 'Vandalized' vehicle The towing company in the popular viral clip is Oxnard towing service Airport Towing. When contacted by Newsweek by phone, the company confirmed the white SUV was an ICE vehicle that had been parked illegally on Thursday, July 10. However, viral reports that the tow truck driver was "following" ICE are inaccurate. According to Airport Towing, the vehicle had been parked illegally on private property for more than an hour when the company arrived to tow it. ICE officers also would not have been able to move the vehicle out of its illegally parked position without a tow truck—the vehicle's tires had been slashed. ICE has not contacted Airport Towing since the incident. Claims that "a bunch" of tow truck drivers are working together to counter ICE also appear to be fabricated. In a June 28 post, fact-checking website Snopes traced the social-media reports back to a satirical website that says it doesn't, "just report the facts, I improve them." Other ICE Fact Checks The potential presence of ICE in communities has led to several online rumors. One rumor is that ICE raids have led to less traffic in Los Angeles and California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla told Newsweek that, "Trump's cruel and inhumane mass deportation agenda has turned communities across Los Angeles into ghost towns." However, some Los Angeles residents disagree, citing other factors including summer break for students. "The level of misinformation about this is nuts," Jason Lemus, an insurance claims adjuster and Los Angeles resident, said on the social platform X, adding, "There's been no significant impact to traffic in LA." An ICE raid on a California cannabis farm turned tragic when 57-year-old worker Jaime Alanis fell 30 feet from a greenhouse roof where he was hiding. Alanis broke his neck and died, becoming the first person to die in one of President Donald Trump's administration's anti-immigration operations since he took office in January. Newsweek reached out to ICE requesting comment.
New York Times
22 minutes ago
- New York Times
The Essential Jane Austen
The great British writer Jane Austen, whose 250th birthday is being celebrated this year, wrote only six complete novels and died without seeing her own extraordinary success. But few authors have had as felicitous, or as enduring, an afterlife as the inimitable Miss Austen. Her books, exquisite comedies of manners and morals set among the landed gentry in 18th- and 19th-century England, are snapshots of their time, but timeless in their appeal. Austen's literary preoccupations — romance, class, morality, money — might seem light, even frivolous. But they carry universal truths, and not just the ironic one in the bravura opening line of 'Pride and Prejudice' about single men, fortunes and wives. With high wit and delectable plotting, the books skewer self-regard, hypocrisy and snobbery; lay bare unpleasant truths about the precarious position of women in Regency England and the dark origins of rich families' fortunes; and exhibit a strikingly modern writing technique. Using free indirect style, also known as free indirect discourse, Austen allows her omniscient narrators to inhabit the thoughts of different characters in turn, in ways that reflect their idiosyncratic quirks of thinking and speaking — maintaining the detachment of the third person while reflecting the biases of someone speaking in the first person. While Austen wasn't the first to employ what is now a thoroughly familiar approach, she refined and popularized it. Austen's life itself was perhaps most remarkable for its unremarkability. (We know less than we should; many of her letters were destroyed after her death — some by her sister, Cassandra, and others, years later, by her niece Fanny.) But we know that she was born in Steventon, Hampshire, in 1775, the seventh of eight children, to the Rev. George and Cassandra Austen, and that she was educated mostly at home, her lessons supplemented by her father's unusually extensive library. After uprooting the family to Bath — a place Jane hated — her father died in 1805, leaving Jane, her mother and her sister financially dependent on their male relatives. In 1809, the three settled in a modest cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane wrote on a small writing table in the dining room (you can see it there still; the house is now a museum). Her first four books — 'Sense and Sensibility' (1811), 'Pride and Prejudice' (1813), 'Mansfield Park' (1814) and 'Emma' (1815) — were published in quick succession toward the end of her life, and without her name on them. (The author was identified only as 'A Lady.') She died in 1817, at the age of 41; her final two novels, 'Persuasion' and 'Northanger Abbey,' were published posthumously. She also left behind 'Lady Susan,' an epistolary novella, and two unfinished novels, 'Sanditon' and 'The Watsons.' Every reader brings her own sensibility to Austen's novels. You can read them for their intricately arranged marriage plots, for their sly humor, for what they say about women and the financial arrangements that underpinned their search for husbands, for their vivid representation of a particular stratum of English life at a particular time. To my mind, there's no one like her for using comic observation to alleviate the sting or tiresomeness of a vexing situation. It helps to imagine: How would Jane have described this? Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
