Before her first speaking engagement in early 2017 at a private conference in her hometown of Seattle, Amanda Knox wore a blanket of nerves.
It’d been nearly 10 years since Knox, then a 20-year-old student at the University of Washington, traveled 5,600 miles to study abroad in Perugia, Italy, about two hours north of Rome. Knox moved into an apartment, which she’d share with Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British student. The two had become friends, but police arrested Knox and charged her with murdering Kercher.
Knox spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before being acquitted in 2011. She’d be found guilty (again) in 2014 and finally exonerated in 2015. The nightmare saga and its aftermath inspired Hulu’s eight-part scripted series “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” starring Grace Van Patten as Knox. The limited series premieres Aug. 20 with two episodes, followed by weekly installments on Wednesdays.
Knox, now 38, remembers being “terrified” before that 2017 speech. “This was at a moment in my life where I still felt limited and diminished, like nothing I could say would ever bring people to believe me," she says. "I felt trapped in the identity and the story, the narrative that had been built around me, of the girl accused of murder. Even though I had been exonerated, that didn't go away.”
