August 18, 2025 • 61 mins
It’s an Amanda Knox confession we didn’t expect. Hear what saved her from spending the rest of her life in an Italian jail, how much her young daughter knows about the painful ordeal, and the eerie advice her mom gave her that could have course corrected everything!
Plus, her thoughts on studying abroad and whether she would do it all over again.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Call It What It Is with Jessica Capshaw and Camille Luddington,
an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, Hello, Hello, Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Hello Call It crew, and welcome to another episode of
Call It What It Is.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I don't even want to chit chat with you. That's
how excited I am about this next guest.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I agree, I don't want to chit chat with you
at all.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Jessica, I've got nothing for you.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I've got nothing for you, but we have so much
for you guys today. Okay, who do we have on
the pod? We have a very special.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Guest today, we have on Amanda Knox. Amanda Knox is
a writer, a podcaster, and a criminal justice reform advocate
whose name became known worldwide after she was wrongfully convicted
and ultimately exonerated in the two thousand and seven murder
of her roommate Meredith Kersher while studying abroad in It.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
She's spent nearly four years in prison and eight years
fighting to clear her name, all under an intense media spotlight. Jessica,
I'm sure you remember that time. I mean it was intense.
Actually doesn't even describe what it was.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
No, Today, she has reclaimed her narrative and she is
using her platform to challenge wrongful convictions, media sensationalism, and
the rush to judgment in high profile cases. And she
has a brand new project, you Guys on Hulu. On
Hulu it is going to Meet, premiering August twentieth, and
(01:35):
it is called The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, and
it is a series. The series dramatizes her story with
unflinching honesty, aiming to spark empathy and deeper reflection about
how we treat those accused of a crime. Let's get
into it, Amanda Knox, welcome to call it what it is.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
We are so excited to have you. We did a
little intro on you and and sort of reminded listeners
in case they didn't know of everything that happened to
you back in two thousand and seven. It does feel
I remember all of that news. It does as as
a listener or outsider to the situation, It does feel
(02:18):
like a long time ago for you. Does it feel
the same or no?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I mean it feels in many ways like another life ago,
because my life is so different now right Like I'm
a mom, I'm married, I have a four year old.
I have a almost two year old, so I'm very
much like in the trenches of motherhood alongside you know,
doing you know, podcasting and executive producing and writing.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
You know, I'm a very.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Busy and and meshed person. Like I'm en meshed in
like my world of people and purpose. And to look
back on those those years of my life where I
was removed from the world and isolated from humanity and
was trapped in a jail cell with limited opportunities and
(03:10):
you know, punished, the huge part of the punishment was
being rendered purposeless.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
It's a whole incredible other life.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
And at the same time, you know, to this day,
there's not a day that goes by that I do
not think about what happened.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
And I'm not.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Totally informed as a human being by what happened. So
it's very distant and very close at the same time.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
When you said that, first of all, I got chills
all over my body. Yeah, but we talk a lot
about Camilla and I talk about it privately, we talk
about it publicly here, but anyone who I get in
a conversation with will know that purpose is kind of
like one of my number ones. It's definitely in the
top three of me understanding myself and in which directions
I move in because I am so purpose driven, and
(04:05):
purpose is you know, it can be in anything, right,
like your purpose in your family, your purpose in your work,
your But there's there's a true there's a there's a true.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
North to it.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
But when you were talking and I was thinking, and
you were saying that the punishment was being purposeless, I
was struck by could you think outside of it? I mean,
could could you dream outside of it?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Could you mean?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Was were you so entrenched in it that it was
the day to day, minute to minute or were you
distracted by the idea that that that this punishment could stop?
Or were you did you get to the point where
not just purposeless but hopeless?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Mmm? So interesting question. So I would have to say
that there were various phases over the course of going
through this experience, and so just I need to like
set a stage of what those what those phases were like.
So in the most simplified way, this legal ordeal, while
(05:09):
it has not fully resolved even today, like let's you know,
just focus on the you know, the murder accusation, right,
I was accused of murder, and that that didn't resolve
itself for eight years. It took eight years for it
to totally resolve itself, the first four of which that
I spent in prison, the second four of which where
I spent outside of prison, but I was still on trial,
(05:30):
I was facing extradition. I was still very much in
this limbo space of do I get to live my
life or not. So the first part of my imprisonment,
the first two years, the first half of my time
in prison, was before I even had a verdict, right,
So me and my family sort of lived in a
(05:54):
state of I mean, hopefulness, but also one might call denial,
because I was very much under the impression that while
these you know, a huge amount of time was being
stolen from me, it was all just a big misunderstanding.
It was all just a big mistake that when all
the adults sort of showed up in the room to
(06:17):
decide on what to do, they would do the right
thing and I would get to go home and I
would get my life back, right. So that mental space
in that was very much a kind of It was
very like that kitten that's hanging on to the branch
is just like, hang on, little kitten, You're going to
get there, and the like the way that my mom
talked about it was that we were in this dark tunnel,
(06:40):
but there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Right, which is home. You've got hope, that's hope.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
But then came the verdict which found me, which which
not only sentenced me to twenty six years in prison. Right,
it's a long time to tell a twenty two year
old girl twenty six years in prison. And the things
that I had to grieve in that moment, like the
idea that I might be a mother one day gone,
(07:07):
The idea that I might fall in love and have
a family just gone. Like the idea that I could
have a career and a future gone. Like I you know,
twenty six years means that I'm coming out in my
late forties and I'm going to be a broken and
traumatized woman who is completely estranged from everything and everyone
that I love. Okay, setting that aside, even there's the
(07:30):
existential crisis of realizing that, oh my god, the truth
doesn't matter. Like everything that I thought I could believe
in and count on has has either let me down
or betrayed me. And now what now what?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
And the verdict being that this incredible certainty, like it
was it was finite. It felt like okay, now, like
the gavel bangs and it's done.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, this is a guilty verdict. You were sentenced to
twenty six years in prison. You are an evil monster
who needs to be shut up and disappear. Like that.
This is what was presented to me, and I was
suddenly had a very quick shift in mental state where
I realized that I wasn't just like living it wasn't
(08:23):
a mistake right, Like, I wasn't just living somebody else's
life by a mistake. That's what it felt like up
to that moment, like oh no, I'm living somebody else's
life by mistake. I just need to get my life back.
As soon as that verdict got handed down, I was like,
oh my god, this is my life and there's nothing
(08:44):
I can do about it. And I went back to
the prison and looked around me with new eyes at
this scenario, which was all of this time that I've
just been sort of like heaping my head down and
thinking about life on the outside, like that life doesn't
(09:08):
exist for me.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
What exists for me is right here this hellhole.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I then but then like the sort of good thing
that came out of it was Okay, what is there
a life worth living in this in this place, within
these limitations, And I quickly realized that actually, you know,
I had gone to Italy to become a translator. Turns
(09:38):
out that the prison needed a translator, and I, over
the course of two years, had become fluent in Italian,
and so suddenly I could be the unofficial translator for
all of those other women in the prison who couldn't
speak Italian and who couldn't defend themselves, and who couldn't
explain their ailments to the doctors, and who couldn't write
letters to their own loved ones because they couldn't read
(10:01):
or write.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
And so I became very purposeful.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Within that prison environment, but still feeling like all those
things that I had hoped for myself, I had to
grieve them.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
And then and.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Then I get released. You know, I'm acquitted. I'm released,
and I'm catapulted back into freedom. And I say that
in quotes, because one I was not technically free. I
was still on trial. So for another four years, I'm
still like facing the prospect that someone's going to steal
my freedom away from me again, but also because all
(10:43):
this time in prison I had I had imagined what
life would be like for me on the outside, and
I really hoped and hoped beyond hope that I would
get the life back that I had before everything happened.
All these bad things happened to me, and I just thought,
if I could only just get home and get back
to my life, I'll be okay. But that life didn't
(11:04):
exist for me anymore either, because the world had changed
around me. I was now the girl accused of murder.
I was very much still in the public eye, and
in a more deeper way, I was changed, Like I
was not the girl who went to Italy and had
never had anything bad happen to her. Like I was
(11:27):
a very changed person. And it took a long time
for me to rediscover how I had changed and what
that meant for how I could exist in the world
in a meaningful way, because the messaging that I got
was you're either a psychopathic murderer who got away with it,
(11:50):
or you've been wrongly convicted, but your wrongful conviction is
your own fault.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
So too bad, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
That's so intense, Yeah that's very and in twenty two
is so young as well to have been experiencing that,
and then when you get it out, you're still so young.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, you're still in your adolescent brain, I.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Mean course, literally discovering yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Arrested at twenty released at let's say I think I was.
Was I twenty Yeah? I was twenty four when I
was released, and then I was finally exonerated when I
was twenty eight.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Can I ask, because we have a lot of young
listeners who maybe don't know all the details of your
case and maybe just broad strokes of it, what was
the thing that did exonerate you in the end.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
So there was a number of things, but the most
important thing was that there was zero DNA evidence that
actually linked me to this crime. Right, So early on,
the prosecution said that there was a murder weapon that
they had discovered. The murder weapon and this is the knife,
right that, Yeah, like my roommate was was raped and
(13:03):
stabbed to death. And so they found this knife that
they just pulled at random from my boyfriend's apartment, and
they said that on this knife there was my DNA
on the handle and my roommate's blood on the blade,
and they presented this in court and everyone believed them
(13:24):
until finally, during my appeals trial, the judge appointed an
independent expert who reviewed the DNA evidence and said, no,
that's not true. Yes, Amanda's DNA is on the handle,
but any DNA that's on the blade is inconclusive at best,
and it's certainly not blood. And so that just blew
(13:47):
the prosecution's case out the window. They had nothing linking
me to this crime, and so they I was found innocent,
and which is great. I think that I'm surprised that
I was ever convicted in the first place, because I
had no motive. They were never able to, you know,
(14:10):
provide a motive why I would rape and murder my roommate.
I had no history of any kind of mental illness
or violence in my background. You know, I had an alibi.
I was at my boyfriend's house. I like the only
like also, you know, for the record, there was like
(14:31):
she was murdered in her bedroom. There was all this
DNA found of someone else who was a known burglar,
who had was known to be violent towards women, and
instead of just saying, oh, it's him, what they said was, oh,
Amanda told him to rape Meredith, and then he held
her down while Amanda stabbed her that like, but there's
(14:52):
no like DNA of me in the room where I
supposedly was struggling to the death with my roommates. So
it's just like it was posterous from the start, but
like people really honed in on, like, oh, it's the
murder weapon, and then some independent experts came along and
were like, actually it's not.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
And then you know, the entire case crumbled.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Everything you're describing sounds so disorienting.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I mean, it doesn't sound real.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Did you have anyone, because that's like living in the
upside down. Someone's telling you all these this laundry list
of things that are that is absolutely not true. You
have no lived experience or memory of it. It's again
being told like it's truth. And then there are people
nodding instead of saying whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Whoa whoa.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I can only imagine how disoriented I would be in
that situation, and I think that whenever I get disoriented,
I immediately like, look, you sort of referenced this earlier. You
look for the adults in the room, like where are
the grownups? Yeah, because these people are not getting it right.
Who was there a grown up at all that you
that you got to trust during this experience, or that
(16:12):
you could look to for critical thinking and or just
that was that when they said the crazy thing, was
like that's a crazy thing.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
Well, so here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Like there were like my prosecutor was like a grown
ass man standing up in front of the courtroom talking
about how I'm a slut monster and like putting like
setting a scene where he's literally putting words into my mouth.
He's like Amanda said, Oh, this is now You're gonna
get it, you prudish little girl. Now I'm gonna make
(16:43):
I'm gonna force you to have sex, and I'm gonna,
you know, like like punish you. And he's just like
making ship up on the fly, like making it up,
and everyone is just sitting there listening to it. And
I'm like, there's he's making this up? Like why are
(17:04):
why are we allowed to do this? Like who's the
one who has the authority?
Speaker 5 (17:09):
And it felt like.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Either the people who had the authority were already just
like totally bought into that narrative or it was like
there is no one who has the authority to this day,
you know it. Of course my family knew that it
was all insane, and of course even my attorneys knew
who was all insane. And there were many you know,
there are many vocal critics of this narrative. Even as
(17:34):
it was going.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
On, did you see headlines like were you aware of
what the coverage was of it as well?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Or were you just living it?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I had limited access because again I was in prison,
so I only had access to Italian reporting.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
But that said, I knew through.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
My family members that there was you know, worldwide inst
in the case. I was receiving letters from all over
the world from people who were writing to say that
they were following the case. It didn't really become like
viscerally clear to me until I was released from prison.
And like, I will never forget being on the plane
(18:20):
and being sort of like whisked away, like away from
all the other passengers the by the airport's staff because
they were afraid that I was going to be mobbed.
And then I get on the airplane and everyone else
falls asleep, but I'm like two, just like amped by
adrenaline because I'm not in a prison cell anymore. And
(18:43):
so I turned on the TV and every single channel
was just my face and my name and the headline,
and I was just like I just felt all. I
just felt a coldness, just like shower over me, like
oh my God. And of course I come home to
Seattle and I'm overwhelmed just by the smell of my home,
(19:06):
which is like, you know that, like I'm from the
Pacific Northwest. There's rain, there's earth, there's pine trees. I
hadn't smelled that in four years, and I'm hit with
it like smelling salts. And the next thing I know,
I'm stuck in front of a press conference, which I'm
completely unprepared for. So yes and no, Like yes, I
(19:27):
was aware that every time I walked into the courtroom
there were more cameras that I can count, and people
shouting at me, and you know, people interviewing my family
members all the time. Like I knew that, but I didn't, like, no,
know that, I don't know. I was finally let out
and I could get a glimpse of it for myself.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Was there any part of you because it was such
a huge case, right and it was covered, it was
covered all over the world, was there any part of
you that came home and felt like you wanted to
change your name to almost assume a new identity, to
remove yourself from that.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
You know, a lot of people have asked me that,
And there's there's a couple factors for why I didn't.
One is that even if I had changed my name,
I still am pretty recognizable. Like there was a point
where I cut off all my hair, I was wearing glasses,
(20:23):
and even then I was still being followed by paparazzi.
So like I there was only I couldn't just like
do a sort of face off maneuver, like I had
a recognizable face.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
So there's that issue.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
But I think the other one was that for me,
changing my name felt like admitting defeat. It felt like
it was admitting that there was something wrong with me
and not something wrong with the way that the world
had treated me. And I was very resistant to the
idea of changing my name because I didn't want to
(20:57):
like give the idea that like there was anything wrong
with me, Like I didn't do anything wrong, and so
I don't need to change all of you need to
change is basically like the feeling. And I think the
other another part of it is this sort of silver
lining to it being so frickin' public is that.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Whether or not other.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
People know about the worst experience of my life. I
know it, yeah, and it's it's it's almost like the
fact that everyone else knows it means that it doesn't
become an obstacle between me and everyone else. It's just
kind of there. It's on the table, and you're going
to react to it the way that you're going to
react to it, and I'm going to learn a lot
(21:44):
about you by the way that you react to it, honestly.
So it's I never at any point had to find myself.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
You know, I know a lot.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
I'm friends with a lot of exonerated people, and not
all of them have you know, world famous cases. And
in fact, you know, I'm pretty up there in terms
of how well known of a wrongful conviction. And some
of them do have that choice of deciding when and
how to share that fact with the people around them,
(22:14):
but they do carry it with them like baggage. It's
like bad news that they have to like share with people,
and it's it's a struggle to like it's a it's
a barrier, it's a it's a it's very often again
like this object of shame y where they like even
if it's not their fault, there's still you know, I
(22:36):
think all victims of you know, especially I think this
is a thing we have in common with victims of crime,
is that like, this bad thing happened to you, but
you don't want it to define you, but in a
big way, it is a part of who you are,
and how do you make sense of that and how
do you decide to share that with people? And in
my case, I didn't have that choice, like it was
just there, and so I had to deal with the
(22:59):
fact that everyone knew, for better or for worse.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, well, I can imagine I'm imagining this that that
being imprisoned, You know that there's a.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That there's a.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Stripping of dignity that would that would stay with you
even if you got out, even if you were that
that feeling, that feeling, I mean, you don't you're not free,
You're you're you're you're less than you're, you're imprisoned, you're
it's it's very different. So you did end up having
(23:33):
such a well known case that now we are led
to the the part where you know, in just a
couple of days there will be a new series that
is different than anything else. That's come out about your story.
It stars Grace van Patten, who I played her mother
on Tommy Lies. So I know Gracey well, I'm from
(23:56):
working with her and she's so lovely and I've been
seeing that the the pictures of her, and it's I've
been very taken by.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
First of all, she looks like.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
You, I know, isn't it wild?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
She really looks like you.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, it's almost creepy, you guys, it.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Is, it really is.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
But tell us, I mean again, you know again, so public,
you have the documentary, you have the podcast, you have,
you know, you're deep into your advocacy work. What was
it about the idea of a limited series that called
to you?
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Like?
Speaker 5 (24:30):
What? What were you?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
What were you going to be able.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
To do in this that you hadn't in the other pieces?
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Great?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
So, I actually first want to go back to something
that you said, which I think is actually a really
smart and empathetic and I want to thank you for that.
Is just noting that what the prison experience is like
and how it changes your psychology and your relationship is
something like privacy. Right in prison, you have no privacy
(24:59):
that does not exis for you anymore. You can't go
to the bathroom without someone watching you. You cannot take
a shower without someone watching you. You do like, privacy
is a luxury that I did not have for four
years of my developing life. Meanwhile, everything about me was
(25:20):
being dissected in the courtroom, you know, true things and
completely false things, like you know, anything about my sex life,
real and imagined up per discussion in broad public in
front of everyone.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And let's not forget that this is like two thousand
and seven, when it's like you were slut shamed, right, Like,
if you had multiple sexual partners, you were slut like
and therefore it said something about you and your moral
compass and all the things. It was a different time,
hopefully than it is now.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Right, And I, yeah, I do feel like a lot
of young women, your younger listeners are, I are like
their response has always been like, oh my god, like
they're just aghast, Like you know, in the world of
like call her daddy, Like, this is a very different
world when we talk about emerging into ourselves as sexual beings,
(26:12):
and that was just not allowed. It was it was
very much a weapon against young women, and that was
deeply weaponized against me. But I to your point, about like,
you know, after having everything about me dissected, it changed
even my relationship to the idea of privacy and what
(26:37):
I could keep private because I felt like, even after
I was released from prison and even after I was exonerated,
like I have and again, this is a burden that
everyone who's been wrongly accused feels. You feel like every
day of your life, for the rest of your life,
you are proving your innocence. Yeah, and there's a kind
(26:57):
of openness that you have to have because it's almost
like you have to be overly transparent in order to
do that to prove your innocence. At least, that's how
a little bit how I feel that makes sense. But
to your point about the series, which I'm so incredibly
proud of and excited about, not least of which because
(27:18):
Grace van Patten is a fricking genius and I really
can't wait to see how like, and I'd love to
know because you've worked with her, how like she's just
like leveled up as an actress by like what was
demanded of her for this role, because it was not
(27:39):
an easy role to take, Like she had to be
a young and naive twenty year old girl, and she
had to be a jaded and haunted thirty five year
old woman. She had to be experiencing the best moments
of my life and the worst moments of my life.
And she had to do it in English and Italian.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
But I read somewhere that she was it was a
dream of hers, so that she had actually followed your
story and she'd actually that she was the one that
was like because at one point Margaret quality was attached
to it. And when she dropped out, she had actually
said to her agent, I, if anyone ever gets to
play her, I would like to play her.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
Yes that true, Yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Her enthusiasm was for the role was like huge her
and you know, her credible gravi toss was he I mean,
you know, tell me lies. She was just an incredible presence,
had so much like depth and gravi toss and like
nuance to her character and then you know, to see
her sort of blossom. Like friends and family of mine
who have seen the series say that they get like
(28:36):
goosebumps watching her because of the way that she really
just takes on my personality and like the sing song
of my voice and the cha cha of my you know,
my footstep, Like there's she's really embodied this role and
also brought herself into it and added these like just
extra layers of nuance, which is so cool.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
I love seeing it.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
We haven't had any humorous moments on this for obvious reason,
but I do. I do just want to say that
Chasha footstep is a good one.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I want to do. What does that sound like? I
want to chaf footsteps or another.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
One is like I snort when I laugh quite a bit,
and so did my grandma Nina, right, and so she,
like I think at least once snorted on like snorted
in one scene so that we got the benefit of
the snort. I was like nicknamed the snort on set
by one of the people.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I mean, I don't want to totally throw Gramma Onion
under the bus. I mean I've been known to snort.
I'm not I'm not above a snort.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
It's happened.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
Yeah, I do it all the time. So did you.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Get to spend I mean, I know, I'm thinking as
an actress, like taking on a role like this, you
could go back and like you could watch interviews and
watch footage. Did you get to spend one on one
time together before shooting so that she could sort of
sit with you in.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
This Oh totally yeah. So we had numerous zoom calls.
We The first time we ever hung out with in
person was an Echo park. We were there with me
and my husband and my kids. And then of course
we spent time together on set, so you know, we've
talked through scenes. We've done some big picture discussions of like, oh,
how do you like really good questions that she would
(30:14):
ask me, like you know, how do you nonverbally communicate
with your husband? Or when when people say you're quirky?
Like what does that mean? Can you give me an example?
And I was like, well, you know like those musical
theater kids, kids from high school. She's like yes, and
You're like, I know what that is. So and she
was like that's that's like me and my friends. And
(30:36):
I was like, yeah, so you got it. And even
that she said that, like I remember recently she said
that it wasn't actually it didn't take this huge leap
in order to like get into the Amanda mindset, because
it was just we're very similar kind of people. Anyway,
(31:05):
were you ever on set and she was in a
scene and they yelled cut and you had to come
in and say like, wait, that's not how I would
have that, like doesn't feel organic to me, like what
I'm seeing, and sort of redirect her in a way
that you would have participated in this moment.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
I never felt.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
The only time I ever stopped and entered in was
when she pronounced.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
The Italian wrong.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
So I was like, oh, you actually pronounced it like this,
and she was like, oh do like you know, like
she was remembering how to pronounce the Italian word, but otherwise,
like her instincts were so spot on. I think there
is only one scene where I was giving a few
notes because but also because it was it was the
(31:58):
scene itself was a such a psychological journey. It was
the interrogation scene. I cannot wait to see this, Yes,
so there, this is. This scene is a tremendous scene
for her to play, because she goes from one mental
state on this roller coaster of a psychological breakdown and
(32:22):
then ends up in a completely altered state by the end.
And it's a it's a long, nuanced scene, and so
there are many moments where like things things are changing,
things are shifting, Different people are interacting with her in
different ways and so it took a lot of like
giving sort of like guidance to people like when is
(32:44):
it that the heat gets amped up in this way?
And who's leading it? And how is Amanda respond. There's
just it was just so much happening all at once
that like there was you know, there was a complicated scene,
but like even in that scene, like her, her instincts
were so strong and I really trusted her and I
(33:05):
saw it with my own eyes as she like lived
It really felt like she was living this this experience
that we.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Had, you know, crafted as a team.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Well, say something about that, because that's that's I'm very
interested in them because obviously it's such a long span
of time and there are so many important pieces and
again you had done some pieces through podcasting and documentaries
that had that had told the story, right, like you
had that, but now you're doing it in is it
(33:39):
eight episodes?
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Yes, it's eight episodes?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
So how did you find them? How did you figure
out what was going to go in? And and is
it different than anything we've seen?
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Right?
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Yeah, Well, to go back to a previous question which
she had asked I didn't fully answer, is like why
why tell the show now? And in this way when
one might say this, this story has been told in
so many ways and so many, so many times. I've
only ever taken part in like one documentary.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
I've done like numerous podcasts and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
But like I did take part in the Amananox Netflix documentary,
but that is a documentary where I was interviewed. I
was not at all, at at any point in any
kind of creative or authoritative role. I was really at
the mercy of the filmmakers to create the film that
they wanted to create. And I think that they made
a great film, and I think that it really touched
(34:36):
upon like the broader implications of this case, and it
didn't just you know, revel in the in the trauma
of it all. So I think they did a really
great job. But again, it wasn't like of my creation.
And many people over the years have reached out to
me because they want to tell my story, and I
(34:59):
wasn't interested in that because for the longest time, this
didn't really feel like my story. So I didn't, you know,
take up any of those opportunities. And it wasn't until
twenty twenty one when I was pregnant and then gave
birth to my daughter, and that I started to think
(35:20):
about how how I could tell this story in a
way that it did feel like my story. And part
of that was because I had already two years, you know,
since twenty nineteen, I had reached out to my prosecutor
and started to develop a relationship with him, and you know,
(35:43):
an epistolary relationship, right, We were communicating with each other,
and I had decided that I was going to return
to Italy to confront him.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
And so you're writing letters back and forth. Yep, the
confrontation wasn't happening in the letters. You were just what
were you saying in the letters?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah, I'm like, is he was he acknowledging that?
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Like he moved up?
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Like that's you know, that says there, And I'm sorry
that you went to prison.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
So I don't want to give anything away, but what
I will say is that this series spends less time
in the epistolary relationship and more time in the actual
like head on confrontation, whereas my book Free, which my
new book Free, my Search for Meaning, does discuss that
(36:35):
epistolary relationship that we developed and then all of that.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So somehow this letter writing exchange leads to a point
in which he agrees and I'm guessing you're asking.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Him to meet you. Yes, he agrees, yes, and then
that okay, yes, was.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
There any part of you that never wanted to go
back to Italy?
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Ever? Again, No, I didn't know if I would be
able to so and again to like return back to.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
Keep I keep not answering questions.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
They have so many questions. This is so yeah captivating.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
So when I partnered with Monica Lewinsky, who had been
a friend, you.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Know, for years, and it was a tremendous human.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
A tremendous human and an incredible like path forger for
those of us who are trying to reclaim our lives
like she has forged that path. And when we partnered
with our creator and showrunner kJ Steinberg, we all agreed
that this story doesn't just exist in the way that
(37:39):
everyone else has told this story, which is it's a
courtroom drama like this is not what this is like.
This story is a personal story of evolution of a
human being. And so that's why it begins and ends
like this story is. Amanda goes back to Italy to
confront her prosecution and to understand and appreciate why we
(38:04):
go back in time and relive everything she went through
in order to get to that final moment when she
confronts her prosecutor and they have that face to face standoff.
And it was so important to kJ and Monica and
me to show that there is a life before trauma
(38:25):
and a life after and that life after is so
that is where this like this distinguishes this show from
any other true crime show that you might have, you
might encounter, because it does not just close the curtain
when I get out of prison, like that is where
I begin to start making decisions for myself in response
(38:46):
to this bad thing that happened to me. And that's
and that's where it becomes a universal story instead of
just this wild, crazy thing that happened, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
It's so interesting that partnering with Monica because obviously, in
during an incredibly exploited and widely known story, there weren't
grown ups in the room.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Of all the people who should have been grown ups
in the room, there should have been grown up.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It was gonna be my next point because that should
be the most grown up of all the grown ups,
and they weren't. And then there was also, you know
in her story not well, the public was the prosecutor
on some level, but there was Linda trip Like at
the center of.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
It, right, that betrayal of Trump.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
And I don't yeah, and I don't know the answer
to this, and maybe I should. So did she ever
confront Linda?
Speaker 4 (39:38):
Did Monica ever have the chance to confront Linda? You
should have her on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Okay, yeah, you know what this is. We have to
hear it from her dress. I think I have a
question have you found I have two questions. Have you
been able to find forgiveness for the people that put
you into the position that you ended up in?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So that is one of the questions that this series
attempts to address and show. And I think what I'll say,
without giving away anything, is that when I set out
to go confront my prosecutor, forgiveness was not my intention.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
However, I was.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
I was surprised to discover that compassion sort of inevitably
leads you down a path that looks a lot like forgiveness,
even if that's not the intention per se. My intention
(40:44):
was to understand him.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
What did you want to hear from him? What would
have been like the perfect thing to hear from him.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
The perfect thing to hear from him would have been,
I was wrong. I'm going to stand on the rooftops
and tell everyone I was wrong, Please forget me. What
can I do to make this up to you? That
would have been amazing?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
And this year series will show us what he did
end up saying to you exactly. Okay, I have my
other question is is you mentioned having a daughter. Yes,
if your daughter wanted to study abroad, is there a
part of you that would be like.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
No, No, I actually am very pro studying abroad, especially
now that we live in a world that's so much
more connected than it was when I.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
Was going and studying abroad.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Like it, it's not necessarily safer, per se, Like being
able to call me on FaceTime doesn't protect someone like
I'm not able to like go and intervene if something
bad is happening to my daughter. But I do think
that I can equip her to trust her own instincts
(41:58):
and yeah, like here's the here's the really dub thing,
like what happened to Meredith, Like, let's put aside what
happened to me?
Speaker 5 (42:10):
What happened to Meredith?
Speaker 4 (42:13):
She was doing everything right, like she was never walking
home alone. She was calling her family members every day.
She was in her own bedroom when she was raped
and murdered, Like, this is not like you know, you know,
she wasn't just like wandering around, you know, in some
(42:33):
back alley like she was. She had gotten a walk
home with her friends and was attacked in her own bedroom. Like,
so there is no way to be perfectly safe in
the world. That said that could have happened to her
(42:54):
in her own hometown.
Speaker 5 (42:56):
It's there. You are.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
You are a sort of by definition, more vulnerable when
you study abroad. But that's also one of the reasons
why it's such a beautiful experience because normally that is
because you're more vulnerable, that leads people to embrace you
and to hold you and to welcome you and to
sort of stitch you into their social fabric because they
(43:19):
recognize you as a human being and they want to
support you. You're a young person who has everything going
for them, Like, you know, when I was in Italy,
I was even having those wonderful experiences where I was
making friends and I was getting to know like it's
this beautiful and I think it's very important to have
like cultural exchanges and to recognize that the world is
(43:41):
bigger than your own backyard and there are different ways
to be and to live and they're all valid. Like,
I think that that's a really important visceral experience to have.
And at the same time, like you are more vulnerable,
and I think that my daughter is not going to
not know that.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
And you know a piece of this.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
When I first heard of your story, you know, we
are we immediately sort of a neurologically, like neurobiologically we
have this like hardwiring to connect. Right, So what about
a story might be something that I understand in a
certain way or in a different way, or that has
somehow touched or kissed my life. And I had studied abroad,
(44:24):
uh in Florence, Italy my junior year classic.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Very art history with you art history.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
And when you were just talking, the vulnerability would be
that you you're still in school, You're you're and so
you have your adolescent mind, which adolescents a fancy world
word for child. Right, you have your child mind. You're
not fully baked yet, You're it's not like maybe you're
going to make some off choices. You have to make
(44:55):
some off choices in order to figure out what the
on choices are, the right choices are, and you're in
a very new place, but you do have this opportunity
because you're so open to everything, You're so open to learning,
you're so receptive. And so when I heard your story,
I remembered that mindset and that feeling of being so open,
(45:18):
so receptive, so or rather less worried about, you know,
fill in the blank doing something that just wasn't necessarily
what you would do, you know, ten years later or whatever,
and knowing that you can make mistakes and then it
can be okay. And yeah, clearly in your case.
Speaker 5 (45:37):
It was not okay.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
It was not okay. Yeah, And just like the fear
that would come in about.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
That, Yeah, I think the biggest fear that I came
out from it was, you know, after you've gone through
an experience like this, how like, not just how do
you trust the rest of the world, but how do
you trust yourself again? Because it was your own openness
and vulnerability that allowed for this to happen. Like, you know,
(46:06):
the second that I called my mom and said, oh
my god, there's been a break in, and then you know,
I called her back later and I was like, Mom,
there's you know, something really bad has happened. She was like,
get on a plane right now, come home. And I didn't.
I didn't because I wanted to help the investigation. I
didn't because the police told me that I should stay
(46:28):
and help them. You know, I didn't for all. And
I didn't because I didn't like I you know, I
was in a scenario where, yes, suddenly I was in
a very scary situation that was very unsafe, but also
I trusted the police, m.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Right, and And it probably never occurred to you that
it was the era was gonna enup pointing at you.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
No, Like it's like it was the least.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Like The thing I was worried about was that the
person who murdered my roommate was like a weird psycho
who was like fixated on the people who lived in
our house. Like I was afraid that maybe this person
was maybe following us and might try to kill me too,
you know, like that that was what I was thinking.
I was not at all thinking that I was going
(47:12):
to be targeted from the very people that I was
leaning on for my own safety.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Did you ever fixate or play back that moment that
feels like a big one.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Like if I just got on the plane, Yeah, yeah,
if you had would have been fine, because I know
there's a lot of conversation about you being an American
in an Italian court, right, so that was a big
part of it. So if you had gone home.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
If I had gone home, none of this would have happened. Wow,
because because the police did fixate on me from the
very beginning, but they had no evidence, Like it was
all based on a hunch. They were like, uh, you know,
one cop said that I smelled like sex and that,
and so it didn't seem right or like another you know.
The cops just like had this idea from the beginning
(48:13):
that what the crime appeared to be, which was that
it was a break in that resulted in a rape
and murder. From the beginning, they believed that the break
in was staged, that the break in wasn't real, and
so someone who lived in the house had staged it
to cover it up, and that's why they were focusing
on me. But even then they had no proof of that.
(48:34):
That was just their hunch.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Yes, there's no like extraditing tone, Yeah, there's no et
me to Italy based on no evidence.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
And what would have resulted had this gone down, is
they would have had to They couldn't have arrested me
because they couldn't have interrogated me. They you know, they
put me through this whole incredible thing so that they
could arrest me by coercing me into implicating myself and others.
But if that had never happened, what would have happened
(49:03):
is they would have gotten They would have had to
await like a week or two to get the forensic
evidence back, and that forensic evidence would have pointed not
to me, but to this local burglar, and they would
have gone after this local burglar, who, by the way,
in the meantime, had fled the country and was assumed
a false identity because he.
Speaker 5 (49:22):
Was the actual murderer and he was off the run.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
I didn't leave because I was trying to help the police,
and because I had nothing to hide.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Of course, you and also that was your friend, and
you wanted to help find your friend's murderer. When you
were making this serious, I think back to like parts
of my life that, like you know, I was traumatized
over and I can't It would be very hard for
me to produce something and watch another actress like re
enacting these moments that were so painful. When you worried
(49:52):
that you would be re traumatized doing a show like this, Yeah,
to sit and watch all these moments again, you.
Speaker 4 (49:58):
Know, I wasn't worried, But what I did find myself
surprised by was how cathartic it was, because you know, one,
when you're on set, you're surrounded like at least you know,
(50:20):
this does a big this is a big production, like
Disney really like put themselves behind this production and really
believed in this story and kJ Steinberg's create a vision
for this story, and so like there were like hundreds
of people on set, and I would walk in and
meet all of these people who were just trying to
(50:42):
do it right for the first time.
Speaker 5 (50:45):
And it was just deeply, deeply moving to me to
be around so many like talented and thoughtful and artful
people who cared so much about getting it right. And
in the meantime, like, yes, I'm reliving these terrible experiences,
but it's not. It doesn't feel re triggering or re traumatizing.
(51:07):
It feels almost like like the grieving process, Like I
was like grieving truly for the first time for this
young person that I was and for the friend that
I had.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Were you reminded of how strong you are, well, your
strength is incredible.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Well I also just love that, like you were, they
took your voice, they took away your voice, and you
get to have it back, and you get to the
fact that you're walking on set and people are so
worried about.
Speaker 5 (51:39):
Getting it right.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
That must feel like oh, like that moment of like yes.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
Yeah, I mean it was a huge almost surreal, like
surreal relief because of how my voice and my perspective
had been treated for so long, which was that it
was less than nothing, you know, And so that was deeply,
deeply gratifying, and I felt like I could truly mourn
in a way that I hadn't before, but in terms
(52:09):
of like how strong I am. Like that's one of
those things that makes it feel very present today because
when I, like again, I do not think, I don't
do not go a day without thinking about everything that happened.
And that's in large part because there are moments in
my day when I'm met with a challenge like any
(52:31):
one of us, and that challenge is immediately put into
perspective by the challenges that I have faced in the
past and by the things that I've been able to reclaim. Like,
you know, you have a four year old daughter. I
have a four year old daughter. I have a two
almost two year old son. It can be challenging, like
it demands a lot of you as a human being.
Speaker 5 (52:54):
But what a fucking gift.
Speaker 4 (52:56):
What a gift to have that opportunity and to like
it has not escaped me, that that I ever that
that was almost stolen from me.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Do you have a time when you think about when
you will tell your children the story?
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Well, I thought I would have more time, but because
I don't hide anything from my children, and because I'm
in the middle of working on this TV show about
this experience, it's kick started the conversation. My daughter started
asking me when she was three, Wow, and she was like,
(53:38):
can you mommy, can you tell me the story of
when mommy went to Italy?
Speaker 5 (53:42):
And I believe in being.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Age appropriately transparent with kids, and when they ask you
a direct question, you should give them a direct answer.
But you know, she's also three, and so she lives
in the you know, in the space of like fairy tales,
and so I tell it to her almost like it's
a fairy tale. Like when mommy was young, she went
on an adventure to Perusia, Italy, and she made friends,
(54:06):
but then someone hurt her friend, and then they thought
Mommy hurt her friend, and so they put her in jail,
and mommy was really sad and alone for a long time.
But then mommy proved that she was innocent and got
to go home, and then she met your daddy, and
then we had you, and it's happily ever after, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Like that, So I just listening to that like makes
me so emotional, honestly, because it's just so I mean,
you're wrapping up this extremely traumatic story and sort of
making it into this fairy tale so that she can
consume it in a way that like it's age appropriate,
she can kind of understand it. And I just think
(54:45):
that that's as a mom, it's got to be really
hard to do. It must be painful to do.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
You know, she makes it easy because as soon as
it's a fairy tale, now she wants to like play pretend,
and she wants like she wants to play pretend. Mommy
goes to Italy with me, so like sometimes when we
go to the park, like she'll find you know, there's
like bars on the park and she'll be like, I'm like,
(55:15):
how do.
Speaker 5 (55:15):
You like not smile at that?
Speaker 4 (55:18):
You know, it's just like you know, she just like
flips it around on you, and you're just like, but there's.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
A reclaiming of it, right, there's a reclaiming of it.
And there's also that what I hear you saying is
in the mindset of like, you know, when when something
that's as important as freedom and privacy is in peril
or you think it might actually go away in perpetuity,
you see you see it differently and you have a
(55:48):
different relationship with it, and there's a gratitude that comes
just almost immediately, and the mindset does change from like
I have to go do this thing too.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
I get to do this thing, even.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
If it's horrible thing on some level, or it's some
base thing or some you know, inconsequential thing, because that
very little small thing like loading the dishwasher, yep is,
was something that you couldn't do.
Speaker 4 (56:12):
Exactly choose what I get to eat for dinner tonight.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I'm so excited to see this series.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
You should.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
I'm actually a little irritated, honestly, because it's not the twentieth.
Speaker 4 (56:24):
I'm I'm so excited for you to see it because
it is so good.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
So, you, guys, this project is called The Twisted Tail
of the men an Ox. It is going to air
on Hulu August twentieth, YEP twenty twenty five, and you'll
be able to binge the whole thing. Or are they
releasing like a couple episodes?
Speaker 5 (56:40):
Like how they're they're making it difficult for you.
Speaker 4 (56:43):
So the first two episodes release on the first day,
and then every week there's one more episode that comes out.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
Oh they're teasing mess.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
I think it's smart.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
Yeah, like I must wait to binge you like the
I think the final episode comes out on October first,
But you know, I recommend, so.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
If I wanted a band, i'd have to wait till then.
Speaker 3 (57:02):
Yeah, we're not waiting.
Speaker 5 (57:04):
But don't wait.
Speaker 4 (57:05):
Don't wait because it's so good and honestly, it's like
a very intense story, so I almost feel like you
are going to need some time to metabolize, yeah, what
you witness before you move on to the next And
in the meantime, there is a trailer out, so if
you want to check out the trailer, you can just
type that up on YouTube and uh, okay.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
A great Amanda. Thank you so much for being here
and just being so open with your story. And I
cannot wait to watch the show. And I hope you
guys are all like writing it in your calendars right
now August twentieth, because it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah yeah, And then I want to have an interactive
I want to, I truly do. Maybe we'll figure out
how in October is okay?
Speaker 5 (57:45):
That would be fun.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
Yeah, meet back here at the same time, because now
I got to know what the what the letters were like,
and then I got to know what the confrontation was like.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
I feel like we need to follow up Amanda after
the series, so we can go back through and just
kind of pick your brain on all the stuff.
Speaker 4 (57:59):
In the meantime, I recommend checking out my book free
my search for Meanings, So if you're curious and like
get in there and and any further questions you have,
I'm available.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Amazing. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you so much
for being with us.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Such a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (58:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
Wow, that was honestly one of my favorite interviews that
we've done with anybody.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
It's not easy to strike a balance when you're talking
about something like this, and she struck it. She just
is so honest, her intentions are so clear as she's
speaking what she's doing. I mean, I also cannot wait.
I'm not joking. I cannot wait to see this show.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
No, I can't wait to see either. I think it's
so interesting. It's almost like it's so fascinating because you
have watched for so long, Like this was the era
of like the Nancy Grace, you know, following the all
the crimes that were happening at the time, and this
this took on a life of its own, and it
almost made her a non person when it was being
(59:05):
reported on. It was almost like she was not treated
like a human being anymore. And so to be able
to even sit with her for an hour after I personally,
I mean I moved here in twenty twenty five, I
remember in two thousand and seven watching all of this
in the US, I mean, it was covered daily in
the news. And to sit with her for an hour
and just talk to her mom to mom even, I
(59:27):
just thought it was incredible.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
And my memory of it was also that she was
very much a person to me, but she was a
one dimensional representation of one, because that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (59:40):
Pictures of her everywhere, I can't.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
I mean, someone should look up how many people in
magazine covers she did, right, it was intense. You saw
her blue eyes, you saw her dark bob, you saw
her all the time, but you never heard from her.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
You never heard her speak. I didn't hear her speak.
Speaker 1 (59:57):
So to have this now come about and for her to,
you know, again, be just so smart. And so I'm
guessing that her storytelling is going to be incredibly compelling.
I'm gonna I'm gonna bet on that.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Yeah, well, she's incredibly compelling. I mean, I've been in
this hour, so to be in charge of a project
like this, I love the the idea that it's given
her some peace and has felt so empowering. And I
want to listen. I want to know the story with
the prosecutor because I get the feeling that he didn't
(01:00:30):
get off on the roof and say I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
So sorry it was wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Yeah I know, yeah, And I loved I loved that
she You know, so much of healing, healing is what
you get, You earn healing by grieving, and it sounded
like she.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
She really dipped into that, so I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Well it sounds like Grace, Oh my gosh, she's such
a great actress.
Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Well it sounds like she's completely done amazing work with this. Well,
so I can't wait to see two. All right, guys,
we're gonna wrap it up, but don't forget. August twentieth
on Hulu watch the Amanda Knock Story and let's call
it
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
The end of the episode.
Call It What It Is with Jessica Capshaw and Camille Luddington,
an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Well, Hello, Hello, Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Hello Call It crew, and welcome to another episode of
Call It What It Is.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I don't even want to chit chat with you. That's
how excited I am about this next guest.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I agree, I don't want to chit chat with you
at all.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Jessica, I've got nothing for you.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I've got nothing for you, but we have so much
for you guys today. Okay, who do we have on
the pod? We have a very special.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Guest today, we have on Amanda Knox. Amanda Knox is
a writer, a podcaster, and a criminal justice reform advocate
whose name became known worldwide after she was wrongfully convicted
and ultimately exonerated in the two thousand and seven murder
of her roommate Meredith Kersher while studying abroad in It.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
She's spent nearly four years in prison and eight years
fighting to clear her name, all under an intense media spotlight. Jessica,
I'm sure you remember that time. I mean it was intense.
Actually doesn't even describe what it was.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
No, Today, she has reclaimed her narrative and she is
using her platform to challenge wrongful convictions, media sensationalism, and
the rush to judgment in high profile cases. And she
has a brand new project, you Guys on Hulu. On
Hulu it is going to Meet, premiering August twentieth, and
(01:35):
it is called The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, and
it is a series. The series dramatizes her story with
unflinching honesty, aiming to spark empathy and deeper reflection about
how we treat those accused of a crime. Let's get
into it, Amanda Knox, welcome to call it what it is.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
We are so excited to have you. We did a
little intro on you and and sort of reminded listeners
in case they didn't know of everything that happened to
you back in two thousand and seven. It does feel
I remember all of that news. It does as as
a listener or outsider to the situation, It does feel
(02:18):
like a long time ago for you. Does it feel
the same or no?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I mean it feels in many ways like another life ago,
because my life is so different now right Like I'm
a mom, I'm married, I have a four year old.
I have a almost two year old, so I'm very
much like in the trenches of motherhood alongside you know,
doing you know, podcasting and executive producing and writing.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
You know, I'm a very.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Busy and and meshed person. Like I'm en meshed in
like my world of people and purpose. And to look
back on those those years of my life where I
was removed from the world and isolated from humanity and
was trapped in a jail cell with limited opportunities and
(03:10):
you know, punished, the huge part of the punishment was
being rendered purposeless.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
It's a whole incredible other life.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
And at the same time, you know, to this day,
there's not a day that goes by that I do
not think about what happened.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
And I'm not.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Totally informed as a human being by what happened. So
it's very distant and very close at the same time.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
When you said that, first of all, I got chills
all over my body. Yeah, but we talk a lot
about Camilla and I talk about it privately, we talk
about it publicly here, but anyone who I get in
a conversation with will know that purpose is kind of
like one of my number ones. It's definitely in the
top three of me understanding myself and in which directions
I move in because I am so purpose driven, and
(04:05):
purpose is you know, it can be in anything, right,
like your purpose in your family, your purpose in your work,
your But there's there's a true there's a there's a true.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
North to it.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
But when you were talking and I was thinking, and
you were saying that the punishment was being purposeless, I
was struck by could you think outside of it? I mean,
could could you dream outside of it?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Could you mean?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Was were you so entrenched in it that it was
the day to day, minute to minute or were you
distracted by the idea that that that this punishment could stop?
Or were you did you get to the point where
not just purposeless but hopeless?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Mmm? So interesting question. So I would have to say
that there were various phases over the course of going
through this experience, and so just I need to like
set a stage of what those what those phases were like.
So in the most simplified way, this legal ordeal, while
(05:09):
it has not fully resolved even today, like let's you know,
just focus on the you know, the murder accusation, right,
I was accused of murder, and that that didn't resolve
itself for eight years. It took eight years for it
to totally resolve itself, the first four of which that
I spent in prison, the second four of which where
I spent outside of prison, but I was still on trial,
(05:30):
I was facing extradition. I was still very much in
this limbo space of do I get to live my
life or not. So the first part of my imprisonment,
the first two years, the first half of my time
in prison, was before I even had a verdict, right,
So me and my family sort of lived in a
(05:54):
state of I mean, hopefulness, but also one might call denial,
because I was very much under the impression that while
these you know, a huge amount of time was being
stolen from me, it was all just a big misunderstanding.
It was all just a big mistake that when all
the adults sort of showed up in the room to
(06:17):
decide on what to do, they would do the right
thing and I would get to go home and I
would get my life back, right. So that mental space
in that was very much a kind of It was
very like that kitten that's hanging on to the branch
is just like, hang on, little kitten, You're going to
get there, and the like the way that my mom
talked about it was that we were in this dark tunnel,
(06:40):
but there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Right, which is home. You've got hope, that's hope.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
But then came the verdict which found me, which which
not only sentenced me to twenty six years in prison. Right,
it's a long time to tell a twenty two year
old girl twenty six years in prison. And the things
that I had to grieve in that moment, like the
idea that I might be a mother one day gone,
(07:07):
The idea that I might fall in love and have
a family just gone. Like the idea that I could
have a career and a future gone. Like I you know,
twenty six years means that I'm coming out in my
late forties and I'm going to be a broken and
traumatized woman who is completely estranged from everything and everyone
that I love. Okay, setting that aside, even there's the
(07:30):
existential crisis of realizing that, oh my god, the truth
doesn't matter. Like everything that I thought I could believe
in and count on has has either let me down
or betrayed me. And now what now what?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
And the verdict being that this incredible certainty, like it
was it was finite. It felt like okay, now, like
the gavel bangs and it's done.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, this is a guilty verdict. You were sentenced to
twenty six years in prison. You are an evil monster
who needs to be shut up and disappear. Like that.
This is what was presented to me, and I was
suddenly had a very quick shift in mental state where
I realized that I wasn't just like living it wasn't
(08:23):
a mistake right, Like, I wasn't just living somebody else's
life by a mistake. That's what it felt like up
to that moment, like oh no, I'm living somebody else's
life by mistake. I just need to get my life back.
As soon as that verdict got handed down, I was like,
oh my god, this is my life and there's nothing
(08:44):
I can do about it. And I went back to
the prison and looked around me with new eyes at
this scenario, which was all of this time that I've
just been sort of like heaping my head down and
thinking about life on the outside, like that life doesn't
(09:08):
exist for me.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
What exists for me is right here this hellhole.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I then but then like the sort of good thing
that came out of it was Okay, what is there
a life worth living in this in this place, within
these limitations, And I quickly realized that actually, you know,
I had gone to Italy to become a translator. Turns
(09:38):
out that the prison needed a translator, and I, over
the course of two years, had become fluent in Italian,
and so suddenly I could be the unofficial translator for
all of those other women in the prison who couldn't
speak Italian and who couldn't defend themselves, and who couldn't
explain their ailments to the doctors, and who couldn't write
letters to their own loved ones because they couldn't read
(10:01):
or write.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
And so I became very purposeful.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Within that prison environment, but still feeling like all those
things that I had hoped for myself, I had to
grieve them.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
And then and.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Then I get released. You know, I'm acquitted. I'm released,
and I'm catapulted back into freedom. And I say that
in quotes, because one I was not technically free. I
was still on trial. So for another four years, I'm
still like facing the prospect that someone's going to steal
my freedom away from me again, but also because all
(10:43):
this time in prison I had I had imagined what
life would be like for me on the outside, and
I really hoped and hoped beyond hope that I would
get the life back that I had before everything happened.
All these bad things happened to me, and I just thought,
if I could only just get home and get back
to my life, I'll be okay. But that life didn't
(11:04):
exist for me anymore either, because the world had changed
around me. I was now the girl accused of murder.
I was very much still in the public eye, and
in a more deeper way, I was changed, Like I
was not the girl who went to Italy and had
never had anything bad happen to her. Like I was
(11:27):
a very changed person. And it took a long time
for me to rediscover how I had changed and what
that meant for how I could exist in the world
in a meaningful way, because the messaging that I got
was you're either a psychopathic murderer who got away with it,
(11:50):
or you've been wrongly convicted, but your wrongful conviction is
your own fault.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
So too bad, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
That's so intense, Yeah that's very and in twenty two
is so young as well to have been experiencing that,
and then when you get it out, you're still so young.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, you're still in your adolescent brain, I.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Mean course, literally discovering yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Arrested at twenty released at let's say I think I was.
Was I twenty Yeah? I was twenty four when I
was released, and then I was finally exonerated when I
was twenty eight.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Can I ask, because we have a lot of young
listeners who maybe don't know all the details of your
case and maybe just broad strokes of it, what was
the thing that did exonerate you in the end.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
So there was a number of things, but the most
important thing was that there was zero DNA evidence that
actually linked me to this crime. Right, So early on,
the prosecution said that there was a murder weapon that
they had discovered. The murder weapon and this is the knife,
right that, Yeah, like my roommate was was raped and
(13:03):
stabbed to death. And so they found this knife that
they just pulled at random from my boyfriend's apartment, and
they said that on this knife there was my DNA
on the handle and my roommate's blood on the blade,
and they presented this in court and everyone believed them
(13:24):
until finally, during my appeals trial, the judge appointed an
independent expert who reviewed the DNA evidence and said, no,
that's not true. Yes, Amanda's DNA is on the handle,
but any DNA that's on the blade is inconclusive at best,
and it's certainly not blood. And so that just blew
(13:47):
the prosecution's case out the window. They had nothing linking
me to this crime, and so they I was found innocent,
and which is great. I think that I'm surprised that
I was ever convicted in the first place, because I
had no motive. They were never able to, you know,
(14:10):
provide a motive why I would rape and murder my roommate.
I had no history of any kind of mental illness
or violence in my background. You know, I had an alibi.
I was at my boyfriend's house. I like the only
like also, you know, for the record, there was like
(14:31):
she was murdered in her bedroom. There was all this
DNA found of someone else who was a known burglar,
who had was known to be violent towards women, and
instead of just saying, oh, it's him, what they said was, oh,
Amanda told him to rape Meredith, and then he held
her down while Amanda stabbed her that like, but there's
(14:52):
no like DNA of me in the room where I
supposedly was struggling to the death with my roommates. So
it's just like it was posterous from the start, but
like people really honed in on, like, oh, it's the
murder weapon, and then some independent experts came along and
were like, actually it's not.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
And then you know, the entire case crumbled.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Everything you're describing sounds so disorienting.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
I mean, it doesn't sound real.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Did you have anyone, because that's like living in the
upside down. Someone's telling you all these this laundry list
of things that are that is absolutely not true. You
have no lived experience or memory of it. It's again
being told like it's truth. And then there are people
nodding instead of saying whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Whoa whoa.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I can only imagine how disoriented I would be in
that situation, and I think that whenever I get disoriented,
I immediately like, look, you sort of referenced this earlier. You
look for the adults in the room, like where are
the grownups? Yeah, because these people are not getting it right.
Who was there a grown up at all that you
that you got to trust during this experience, or that
(16:12):
you could look to for critical thinking and or just
that was that when they said the crazy thing, was
like that's a crazy thing.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
Well, so here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Like there were like my prosecutor was like a grown
ass man standing up in front of the courtroom talking
about how I'm a slut monster and like putting like
setting a scene where he's literally putting words into my mouth.
He's like Amanda said, Oh, this is now You're gonna
get it, you prudish little girl. Now I'm gonna make
(16:43):
I'm gonna force you to have sex, and I'm gonna,
you know, like like punish you. And he's just like
making ship up on the fly, like making it up,
and everyone is just sitting there listening to it. And
I'm like, there's he's making this up? Like why are
(17:04):
why are we allowed to do this? Like who's the
one who has the authority?
Speaker 5 (17:09):
And it felt like.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Either the people who had the authority were already just
like totally bought into that narrative or it was like
there is no one who has the authority to this day,
you know it. Of course my family knew that it
was all insane, and of course even my attorneys knew
who was all insane. And there were many you know,
there are many vocal critics of this narrative. Even as
(17:34):
it was going.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
On, did you see headlines like were you aware of
what the coverage was of it as well?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Or were you just living it?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
I had limited access because again I was in prison,
so I only had access to Italian reporting.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
But that said, I knew through.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
My family members that there was you know, worldwide inst
in the case. I was receiving letters from all over
the world from people who were writing to say that
they were following the case. It didn't really become like
viscerally clear to me until I was released from prison.
And like, I will never forget being on the plane
(18:20):
and being sort of like whisked away, like away from
all the other passengers the by the airport's staff because
they were afraid that I was going to be mobbed.
And then I get on the airplane and everyone else
falls asleep, but I'm like two, just like amped by
adrenaline because I'm not in a prison cell anymore. And
(18:43):
so I turned on the TV and every single channel
was just my face and my name and the headline,
and I was just like I just felt all. I
just felt a coldness, just like shower over me, like
oh my God. And of course I come home to
Seattle and I'm overwhelmed just by the smell of my home,
(19:06):
which is like, you know that, like I'm from the
Pacific Northwest. There's rain, there's earth, there's pine trees. I
hadn't smelled that in four years, and I'm hit with
it like smelling salts. And the next thing I know,
I'm stuck in front of a press conference, which I'm
completely unprepared for. So yes and no, Like yes, I
(19:27):
was aware that every time I walked into the courtroom
there were more cameras that I can count, and people
shouting at me, and you know, people interviewing my family
members all the time. Like I knew that, but I didn't, like, no,
know that, I don't know. I was finally let out
and I could get a glimpse of it for myself.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Was there any part of you because it was such
a huge case, right and it was covered, it was
covered all over the world, was there any part of
you that came home and felt like you wanted to
change your name to almost assume a new identity, to
remove yourself from that.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
You know, a lot of people have asked me that,
And there's there's a couple factors for why I didn't.
One is that even if I had changed my name,
I still am pretty recognizable. Like there was a point
where I cut off all my hair, I was wearing glasses,
(20:23):
and even then I was still being followed by paparazzi.
So like I there was only I couldn't just like
do a sort of face off maneuver, like I had
a recognizable face.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
So there's that issue.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
But I think the other one was that for me,
changing my name felt like admitting defeat. It felt like
it was admitting that there was something wrong with me
and not something wrong with the way that the world
had treated me. And I was very resistant to the
idea of changing my name because I didn't want to
(20:57):
like give the idea that like there was anything wrong
with me, Like I didn't do anything wrong, and so
I don't need to change all of you need to
change is basically like the feeling. And I think the
other another part of it is this sort of silver
lining to it being so frickin' public is that.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Whether or not other.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
People know about the worst experience of my life. I
know it, yeah, and it's it's it's almost like the
fact that everyone else knows it means that it doesn't
become an obstacle between me and everyone else. It's just
kind of there. It's on the table, and you're going
to react to it the way that you're going to
react to it, and I'm going to learn a lot
(21:44):
about you by the way that you react to it, honestly.
So it's I never at any point had to find myself.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
You know, I know a lot.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
I'm friends with a lot of exonerated people, and not
all of them have you know, world famous cases. And
in fact, you know, I'm pretty up there in terms
of how well known of a wrongful conviction. And some
of them do have that choice of deciding when and
how to share that fact with the people around them,
(22:14):
but they do carry it with them like baggage. It's
like bad news that they have to like share with people,
and it's it's a struggle to like it's a it's
a barrier, it's a it's a it's very often again
like this object of shame y where they like even
if it's not their fault, there's still you know, I
(22:36):
think all victims of you know, especially I think this
is a thing we have in common with victims of crime,
is that like, this bad thing happened to you, but
you don't want it to define you, but in a
big way, it is a part of who you are,
and how do you make sense of that and how
do you decide to share that with people? And in
my case, I didn't have that choice, like it was
just there, and so I had to deal with the
(22:59):
fact that everyone knew, for better or for worse.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, well, I can imagine I'm imagining this that that
being imprisoned, You know that there's a.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That there's a.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Stripping of dignity that would that would stay with you
even if you got out, even if you were that
that feeling, that feeling, I mean, you don't you're not free,
You're you're you're you're less than you're, you're imprisoned, you're
it's it's very different. So you did end up having
(23:33):
such a well known case that now we are led
to the the part where you know, in just a
couple of days there will be a new series that
is different than anything else. That's come out about your story.
It stars Grace van Patten, who I played her mother
on Tommy Lies. So I know Gracey well, I'm from
(23:56):
working with her and she's so lovely and I've been
seeing that the the pictures of her, and it's I've
been very taken by.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
First of all, she looks like.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
You, I know, isn't it wild?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
She really looks like you.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, it's almost creepy, you guys, it.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Is, it really is.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
But tell us, I mean again, you know again, so public,
you have the documentary, you have the podcast, you have,
you know, you're deep into your advocacy work. What was
it about the idea of a limited series that called
to you?
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Like?
Speaker 5 (24:30):
What? What were you?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
What were you going to be able.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
To do in this that you hadn't in the other pieces?
Speaker 5 (24:36):
Great?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
So, I actually first want to go back to something
that you said, which I think is actually a really
smart and empathetic and I want to thank you for that.
Is just noting that what the prison experience is like
and how it changes your psychology and your relationship is
something like privacy. Right in prison, you have no privacy
(24:59):
that does not exis for you anymore. You can't go
to the bathroom without someone watching you. You cannot take
a shower without someone watching you. You do like, privacy
is a luxury that I did not have for four
years of my developing life. Meanwhile, everything about me was
(25:20):
being dissected in the courtroom, you know, true things and
completely false things, like you know, anything about my sex life,
real and imagined up per discussion in broad public in
front of everyone.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And let's not forget that this is like two thousand
and seven, when it's like you were slut shamed, right, Like,
if you had multiple sexual partners, you were slut like
and therefore it said something about you and your moral
compass and all the things. It was a different time,
hopefully than it is now.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Right, And I, yeah, I do feel like a lot
of young women, your younger listeners are, I are like
their response has always been like, oh my god, like
they're just aghast, Like you know, in the world of
like call her daddy, Like, this is a very different
world when we talk about emerging into ourselves as sexual beings,
(26:12):
and that was just not allowed. It was it was
very much a weapon against young women, and that was
deeply weaponized against me. But I to your point, about like,
you know, after having everything about me dissected, it changed
even my relationship to the idea of privacy and what
(26:37):
I could keep private because I felt like, even after
I was released from prison and even after I was exonerated,
like I have and again, this is a burden that
everyone who's been wrongly accused feels. You feel like every
day of your life, for the rest of your life,
you are proving your innocence. Yeah, and there's a kind
(26:57):
of openness that you have to have because it's almost
like you have to be overly transparent in order to
do that to prove your innocence. At least, that's how
a little bit how I feel that makes sense. But
to your point about the series, which I'm so incredibly
proud of and excited about, not least of which because
(27:18):
Grace van Patten is a fricking genius and I really
can't wait to see how like, and I'd love to
know because you've worked with her, how like she's just
like leveled up as an actress by like what was
demanded of her for this role, because it was not
(27:39):
an easy role to take, Like she had to be
a young and naive twenty year old girl, and she
had to be a jaded and haunted thirty five year
old woman. She had to be experiencing the best moments
of my life and the worst moments of my life.
And she had to do it in English and Italian.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
But I read somewhere that she was it was a
dream of hers, so that she had actually followed your
story and she'd actually that she was the one that
was like because at one point Margaret quality was attached
to it. And when she dropped out, she had actually
said to her agent, I, if anyone ever gets to
play her, I would like to play her.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
Yes that true, Yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Her enthusiasm was for the role was like huge her
and you know, her credible gravi toss was he I mean,
you know, tell me lies. She was just an incredible presence,
had so much like depth and gravi toss and like
nuance to her character and then you know, to see
her sort of blossom. Like friends and family of mine
who have seen the series say that they get like
(28:36):
goosebumps watching her because of the way that she really
just takes on my personality and like the sing song
of my voice and the cha cha of my you know,
my footstep, Like there's she's really embodied this role and
also brought herself into it and added these like just
extra layers of nuance, which is so cool.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
I love seeing it.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
We haven't had any humorous moments on this for obvious reason,
but I do. I do just want to say that
Chasha footstep is a good one.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I want to do. What does that sound like? I
want to chaf footsteps or another.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
One is like I snort when I laugh quite a bit,
and so did my grandma Nina, right, and so she,
like I think at least once snorted on like snorted
in one scene so that we got the benefit of
the snort. I was like nicknamed the snort on set
by one of the people.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I mean, I don't want to totally throw Gramma Onion
under the bus. I mean I've been known to snort.
I'm not I'm not above a snort.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
It's happened.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
Yeah, I do it all the time. So did you.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Get to spend I mean, I know, I'm thinking as
an actress, like taking on a role like this, you
could go back and like you could watch interviews and
watch footage. Did you get to spend one on one
time together before shooting so that she could sort of
sit with you in.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
This Oh totally yeah. So we had numerous zoom calls.
We The first time we ever hung out with in
person was an Echo park. We were there with me
and my husband and my kids. And then of course
we spent time together on set, so you know, we've
talked through scenes. We've done some big picture discussions of like, oh,
how do you like really good questions that she would
(30:14):
ask me, like you know, how do you nonverbally communicate
with your husband? Or when when people say you're quirky?
Like what does that mean? Can you give me an example?
And I was like, well, you know like those musical
theater kids, kids from high school. She's like yes, and
You're like, I know what that is. So and she
was like that's that's like me and my friends. And
(30:36):
I was like, yeah, so you got it. And even
that she said that, like I remember recently she said
that it wasn't actually it didn't take this huge leap
in order to like get into the Amanda mindset, because
it was just we're very similar kind of people. Anyway,
(31:05):
were you ever on set and she was in a
scene and they yelled cut and you had to come
in and say like, wait, that's not how I would
have that, like doesn't feel organic to me, like what
I'm seeing, and sort of redirect her in a way
that you would have participated in this moment.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
I never felt.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
The only time I ever stopped and entered in was
when she pronounced.
Speaker 5 (31:33):
The Italian wrong.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
So I was like, oh, you actually pronounced it like this,
and she was like, oh do like you know, like
she was remembering how to pronounce the Italian word, but otherwise,
like her instincts were so spot on. I think there
is only one scene where I was giving a few
notes because but also because it was it was the
(31:58):
scene itself was a such a psychological journey. It was
the interrogation scene. I cannot wait to see this, Yes,
so there, this is. This scene is a tremendous scene
for her to play, because she goes from one mental
state on this roller coaster of a psychological breakdown and
(32:22):
then ends up in a completely altered state by the end.
And it's a it's a long, nuanced scene, and so
there are many moments where like things things are changing,
things are shifting, Different people are interacting with her in
different ways and so it took a lot of like
giving sort of like guidance to people like when is
(32:44):
it that the heat gets amped up in this way?
And who's leading it? And how is Amanda respond. There's
just it was just so much happening all at once
that like there was you know, there was a complicated scene,
but like even in that scene, like her, her instincts
were so strong and I really trusted her and I
(33:05):
saw it with my own eyes as she like lived
It really felt like she was living this this experience
that we.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Had, you know, crafted as a team.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Well, say something about that, because that's that's I'm very
interested in them because obviously it's such a long span
of time and there are so many important pieces and
again you had done some pieces through podcasting and documentaries
that had that had told the story, right, like you
had that, but now you're doing it in is it
(33:39):
eight episodes?
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Yes, it's eight episodes?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
So how did you find them? How did you figure
out what was going to go in? And and is
it different than anything we've seen?
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Right?
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Yeah, Well, to go back to a previous question which
she had asked I didn't fully answer, is like why
why tell the show now? And in this way when
one might say this, this story has been told in
so many ways and so many, so many times. I've
only ever taken part in like one documentary.
Speaker 5 (34:12):
I've done like numerous podcasts and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
But like I did take part in the Amananox Netflix documentary,
but that is a documentary where I was interviewed. I
was not at all, at at any point in any
kind of creative or authoritative role. I was really at
the mercy of the filmmakers to create the film that
they wanted to create. And I think that they made
a great film, and I think that it really touched
(34:36):
upon like the broader implications of this case, and it
didn't just you know, revel in the in the trauma
of it all. So I think they did a really
great job. But again, it wasn't like of my creation.
And many people over the years have reached out to
me because they want to tell my story, and I
(34:59):
wasn't interested in that because for the longest time, this
didn't really feel like my story. So I didn't, you know,
take up any of those opportunities. And it wasn't until
twenty twenty one when I was pregnant and then gave
birth to my daughter, and that I started to think
(35:20):
about how how I could tell this story in a
way that it did feel like my story. And part
of that was because I had already two years, you know,
since twenty nineteen, I had reached out to my prosecutor
and started to develop a relationship with him, and you know,
(35:43):
an epistolary relationship, right, We were communicating with each other,
and I had decided that I was going to return
to Italy to confront him.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
And so you're writing letters back and forth. Yep, the
confrontation wasn't happening in the letters. You were just what
were you saying in the letters?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah, I'm like, is he was he acknowledging that?
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Like he moved up?
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Like that's you know, that says there, And I'm sorry
that you went to prison.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
So I don't want to give anything away, but what
I will say is that this series spends less time
in the epistolary relationship and more time in the actual
like head on confrontation, whereas my book Free, which my
new book Free, my Search for Meaning, does discuss that
(36:35):
epistolary relationship that we developed and then all of that.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So somehow this letter writing exchange leads to a point
in which he agrees and I'm guessing you're asking.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Him to meet you. Yes, he agrees, yes, and then
that okay, yes, was.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
There any part of you that never wanted to go
back to Italy?
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Ever? Again, No, I didn't know if I would be
able to so and again to like return back to.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
Keep I keep not answering questions.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
They have so many questions. This is so yeah captivating.
Speaker 4 (37:11):
So when I partnered with Monica Lewinsky, who had been
a friend, you.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Know, for years, and it was a tremendous human.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
A tremendous human and an incredible like path forger for
those of us who are trying to reclaim our lives
like she has forged that path. And when we partnered
with our creator and showrunner kJ Steinberg, we all agreed
that this story doesn't just exist in the way that
(37:39):
everyone else has told this story, which is it's a
courtroom drama like this is not what this is like.
This story is a personal story of evolution of a
human being. And so that's why it begins and ends
like this story is. Amanda goes back to Italy to
confront her prosecution and to understand and appreciate why we
(38:04):
go back in time and relive everything she went through
in order to get to that final moment when she
confronts her prosecutor and they have that face to face standoff.
And it was so important to kJ and Monica and
me to show that there is a life before trauma
(38:25):
and a life after and that life after is so
that is where this like this distinguishes this show from
any other true crime show that you might have, you
might encounter, because it does not just close the curtain
when I get out of prison, like that is where
I begin to start making decisions for myself in response
(38:46):
to this bad thing that happened to me. And that's
and that's where it becomes a universal story instead of
just this wild, crazy thing that happened, you know, right.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
It's so interesting that partnering with Monica because obviously, in
during an incredibly exploited and widely known story, there weren't
grown ups in the room.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Of all the people who should have been grown ups
in the room, there should have been grown up.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It was gonna be my next point because that should
be the most grown up of all the grown ups,
and they weren't. And then there was also, you know
in her story not well, the public was the prosecutor
on some level, but there was Linda trip Like at
the center of.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
It, right, that betrayal of Trump.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
And I don't yeah, and I don't know the answer
to this, and maybe I should. So did she ever
confront Linda?
Speaker 4 (39:38):
Did Monica ever have the chance to confront Linda? You
should have her on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Okay, yeah, you know what this is. We have to
hear it from her dress. I think I have a
question have you found I have two questions. Have you
been able to find forgiveness for the people that put
you into the position that you ended up in?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So that is one of the questions that this series
attempts to address and show. And I think what I'll say,
without giving away anything, is that when I set out
to go confront my prosecutor, forgiveness was not my intention.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
However, I was.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
I was surprised to discover that compassion sort of inevitably
leads you down a path that looks a lot like forgiveness,
even if that's not the intention per se. My intention
(40:44):
was to understand him.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
What did you want to hear from him? What would
have been like the perfect thing to hear from him.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
The perfect thing to hear from him would have been,
I was wrong. I'm going to stand on the rooftops
and tell everyone I was wrong, Please forget me. What
can I do to make this up to you? That
would have been amazing?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
And this year series will show us what he did
end up saying to you exactly. Okay, I have my
other question is is you mentioned having a daughter. Yes,
if your daughter wanted to study abroad, is there a
part of you that would be like.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
No, No, I actually am very pro studying abroad, especially
now that we live in a world that's so much
more connected than it was when I.
Speaker 5 (41:35):
Was going and studying abroad.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Like it, it's not necessarily safer, per se, Like being
able to call me on FaceTime doesn't protect someone like
I'm not able to like go and intervene if something
bad is happening to my daughter. But I do think
that I can equip her to trust her own instincts
(41:58):
and yeah, like here's the here's the really dub thing,
like what happened to Meredith, Like, let's put aside what
happened to me?
Speaker 5 (42:10):
What happened to Meredith?
Speaker 4 (42:13):
She was doing everything right, like she was never walking
home alone. She was calling her family members every day.
She was in her own bedroom when she was raped
and murdered, Like, this is not like you know, you know,
she wasn't just like wandering around, you know, in some
(42:33):
back alley like she was. She had gotten a walk
home with her friends and was attacked in her own bedroom. Like,
so there is no way to be perfectly safe in
the world. That said that could have happened to her
(42:54):
in her own hometown.
Speaker 5 (42:56):
It's there. You are.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
You are a sort of by definition, more vulnerable when
you study abroad. But that's also one of the reasons
why it's such a beautiful experience because normally that is
because you're more vulnerable, that leads people to embrace you
and to hold you and to welcome you and to
sort of stitch you into their social fabric because they
(43:19):
recognize you as a human being and they want to
support you. You're a young person who has everything going
for them, Like, you know, when I was in Italy,
I was even having those wonderful experiences where I was
making friends and I was getting to know like it's
this beautiful and I think it's very important to have
like cultural exchanges and to recognize that the world is
(43:41):
bigger than your own backyard and there are different ways
to be and to live and they're all valid. Like,
I think that that's a really important visceral experience to have.
And at the same time, like you are more vulnerable,
and I think that my daughter is not going to
not know that.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
And you know a piece of this.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
When I first heard of your story, you know, we
are we immediately sort of a neurologically, like neurobiologically we
have this like hardwiring to connect. Right, So what about
a story might be something that I understand in a
certain way or in a different way, or that has
somehow touched or kissed my life. And I had studied abroad,
(44:24):
uh in Florence, Italy my junior year classic.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Very art history with you art history.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
And when you were just talking, the vulnerability would be
that you you're still in school, You're you're and so
you have your adolescent mind, which adolescents a fancy world
word for child. Right, you have your child mind. You're
not fully baked yet, You're it's not like maybe you're
going to make some off choices. You have to make
(44:55):
some off choices in order to figure out what the
on choices are, the right choices are, and you're in
a very new place, but you do have this opportunity
because you're so open to everything, You're so open to learning,
you're so receptive. And so when I heard your story,
I remembered that mindset and that feeling of being so open,
(45:18):
so receptive, so or rather less worried about, you know,
fill in the blank doing something that just wasn't necessarily
what you would do, you know, ten years later or whatever,
and knowing that you can make mistakes and then it
can be okay. And yeah, clearly in your case.
Speaker 5 (45:37):
It was not okay.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
It was not okay. Yeah, And just like the fear
that would come in about.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
That, Yeah, I think the biggest fear that I came
out from it was, you know, after you've gone through
an experience like this, how like, not just how do
you trust the rest of the world, but how do
you trust yourself again? Because it was your own openness
and vulnerability that allowed for this to happen. Like, you know,
(46:06):
the second that I called my mom and said, oh
my god, there's been a break in, and then you know,
I called her back later and I was like, Mom,
there's you know, something really bad has happened. She was like,
get on a plane right now, come home. And I didn't.
I didn't because I wanted to help the investigation. I
didn't because the police told me that I should stay
(46:28):
and help them. You know, I didn't for all. And
I didn't because I didn't like I you know, I
was in a scenario where, yes, suddenly I was in
a very scary situation that was very unsafe, but also
I trusted the police, m.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Right, and And it probably never occurred to you that
it was the era was gonna enup pointing at you.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
No, Like it's like it was the least.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Like The thing I was worried about was that the
person who murdered my roommate was like a weird psycho
who was like fixated on the people who lived in
our house. Like I was afraid that maybe this person
was maybe following us and might try to kill me too,
you know, like that that was what I was thinking.
I was not at all thinking that I was going
(47:12):
to be targeted from the very people that I was
leaning on for my own safety.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Did you ever fixate or play back that moment that
feels like a big one.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Like if I just got on the plane, Yeah, yeah,
if you had would have been fine, because I know
there's a lot of conversation about you being an American
in an Italian court, right, so that was a big
part of it. So if you had gone home.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
If I had gone home, none of this would have happened. Wow,
because because the police did fixate on me from the
very beginning, but they had no evidence, Like it was
all based on a hunch. They were like, uh, you know,
one cop said that I smelled like sex and that,
and so it didn't seem right or like another you know.
The cops just like had this idea from the beginning
(48:13):
that what the crime appeared to be, which was that
it was a break in that resulted in a rape
and murder. From the beginning, they believed that the break
in was staged, that the break in wasn't real, and
so someone who lived in the house had staged it
to cover it up, and that's why they were focusing
on me. But even then they had no proof of that.
(48:34):
That was just their hunch.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Yes, there's no like extraditing tone, Yeah, there's no et
me to Italy based on no evidence.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
And what would have resulted had this gone down, is
they would have had to They couldn't have arrested me
because they couldn't have interrogated me. They you know, they
put me through this whole incredible thing so that they
could arrest me by coercing me into implicating myself and others.
But if that had never happened, what would have happened
(49:03):
is they would have gotten They would have had to
await like a week or two to get the forensic
evidence back, and that forensic evidence would have pointed not
to me, but to this local burglar, and they would
have gone after this local burglar, who, by the way,
in the meantime, had fled the country and was assumed
a false identity because he.
Speaker 5 (49:22):
Was the actual murderer and he was off the run.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
I didn't leave because I was trying to help the police,
and because I had nothing to hide.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Of course, you and also that was your friend, and
you wanted to help find your friend's murderer. When you
were making this serious, I think back to like parts
of my life that, like you know, I was traumatized
over and I can't It would be very hard for
me to produce something and watch another actress like re
enacting these moments that were so painful. When you worried
(49:52):
that you would be re traumatized doing a show like this, Yeah,
to sit and watch all these moments again, you.
Speaker 4 (49:58):
Know, I wasn't worried, But what I did find myself
surprised by was how cathartic it was, because you know, one,
when you're on set, you're surrounded like at least you know,
(50:20):
this does a big this is a big production, like
Disney really like put themselves behind this production and really
believed in this story and kJ Steinberg's create a vision
for this story, and so like there were like hundreds
of people on set, and I would walk in and
meet all of these people who were just trying to
(50:42):
do it right for the first time.
Speaker 5 (50:45):
And it was just deeply, deeply moving to me to
be around so many like talented and thoughtful and artful
people who cared so much about getting it right. And
in the meantime, like, yes, I'm reliving these terrible experiences,
but it's not. It doesn't feel re triggering or re traumatizing.
(51:07):
It feels almost like like the grieving process, Like I
was like grieving truly for the first time for this
young person that I was and for the friend that
I had.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Were you reminded of how strong you are, well, your
strength is incredible.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Well I also just love that, like you were, they
took your voice, they took away your voice, and you
get to have it back, and you get to the
fact that you're walking on set and people are so
worried about.
Speaker 5 (51:39):
Getting it right.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
That must feel like oh, like that moment of like yes.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
Yeah, I mean it was a huge almost surreal, like
surreal relief because of how my voice and my perspective
had been treated for so long, which was that it
was less than nothing, you know, And so that was deeply,
deeply gratifying, and I felt like I could truly mourn
in a way that I hadn't before, but in terms
(52:09):
of like how strong I am. Like that's one of
those things that makes it feel very present today because
when I, like again, I do not think, I don't
do not go a day without thinking about everything that happened.
And that's in large part because there are moments in
my day when I'm met with a challenge like any
(52:31):
one of us, and that challenge is immediately put into
perspective by the challenges that I have faced in the
past and by the things that I've been able to reclaim. Like,
you know, you have a four year old daughter. I
have a four year old daughter. I have a two
almost two year old son. It can be challenging, like
it demands a lot of you as a human being.
Speaker 5 (52:54):
But what a fucking gift.
Speaker 4 (52:56):
What a gift to have that opportunity and to like
it has not escaped me, that that I ever that
that was almost stolen from me.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Do you have a time when you think about when
you will tell your children the story?
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Well, I thought I would have more time, but because
I don't hide anything from my children, and because I'm
in the middle of working on this TV show about
this experience, it's kick started the conversation. My daughter started
asking me when she was three, Wow, and she was like,
(53:38):
can you mommy, can you tell me the story of
when mommy went to Italy?
Speaker 5 (53:42):
And I believe in being.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Age appropriately transparent with kids, and when they ask you
a direct question, you should give them a direct answer.
But you know, she's also three, and so she lives
in the you know, in the space of like fairy tales,
and so I tell it to her almost like it's
a fairy tale. Like when mommy was young, she went
on an adventure to Perusia, Italy, and she made friends,
(54:06):
but then someone hurt her friend, and then they thought
Mommy hurt her friend, and so they put her in jail,
and mommy was really sad and alone for a long time.
But then mommy proved that she was innocent and got
to go home, and then she met your daddy, and
then we had you, and it's happily ever after, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Like that, So I just listening to that like makes
me so emotional, honestly, because it's just so I mean,
you're wrapping up this extremely traumatic story and sort of
making it into this fairy tale so that she can
consume it in a way that like it's age appropriate,
she can kind of understand it. And I just think
(54:45):
that that's as a mom, it's got to be really
hard to do. It must be painful to do.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
You know, she makes it easy because as soon as
it's a fairy tale, now she wants to like play pretend,
and she wants like she wants to play pretend. Mommy
goes to Italy with me, so like sometimes when we
go to the park, like she'll find you know, there's
like bars on the park and she'll be like, I'm like,
(55:15):
how do.
Speaker 5 (55:15):
You like not smile at that?
Speaker 4 (55:18):
You know, it's just like you know, she just like
flips it around on you, and you're just like, but there's.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
A reclaiming of it, right, there's a reclaiming of it.
And there's also that what I hear you saying is
in the mindset of like, you know, when when something
that's as important as freedom and privacy is in peril
or you think it might actually go away in perpetuity,
you see you see it differently and you have a
(55:48):
different relationship with it, and there's a gratitude that comes
just almost immediately, and the mindset does change from like
I have to go do this thing too.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
I get to do this thing, even.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
If it's horrible thing on some level, or it's some
base thing or some you know, inconsequential thing, because that
very little small thing like loading the dishwasher, yep is,
was something that you couldn't do.
Speaker 4 (56:12):
Exactly choose what I get to eat for dinner tonight.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I'm so excited to see this series.
Speaker 5 (56:19):
You should.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
I'm actually a little irritated, honestly, because it's not the twentieth.
Speaker 4 (56:24):
I'm I'm so excited for you to see it because
it is so good.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
So, you, guys, this project is called The Twisted Tail
of the men an Ox. It is going to air
on Hulu August twentieth, YEP twenty twenty five, and you'll
be able to binge the whole thing. Or are they
releasing like a couple episodes?
Speaker 5 (56:40):
Like how they're they're making it difficult for you.
Speaker 4 (56:43):
So the first two episodes release on the first day,
and then every week there's one more episode that comes out.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
Oh they're teasing mess.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
I think it's smart.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
Yeah, like I must wait to binge you like the
I think the final episode comes out on October first,
But you know, I recommend, so.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
If I wanted a band, i'd have to wait till then.
Speaker 3 (57:02):
Yeah, we're not waiting.
Speaker 5 (57:04):
But don't wait.
Speaker 4 (57:05):
Don't wait because it's so good and honestly, it's like
a very intense story, so I almost feel like you
are going to need some time to metabolize, yeah, what
you witness before you move on to the next And
in the meantime, there is a trailer out, so if
you want to check out the trailer, you can just
type that up on YouTube and uh, okay.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
A great Amanda. Thank you so much for being here
and just being so open with your story. And I
cannot wait to watch the show. And I hope you
guys are all like writing it in your calendars right
now August twentieth, because it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah yeah, And then I want to have an interactive
I want to, I truly do. Maybe we'll figure out
how in October is okay?
Speaker 5 (57:45):
That would be fun.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
Yeah, meet back here at the same time, because now
I got to know what the what the letters were like,
and then I got to know what the confrontation was like.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
I feel like we need to follow up Amanda after
the series, so we can go back through and just
kind of pick your brain on all the stuff.
Speaker 4 (57:59):
In the meantime, I recommend checking out my book free
my search for Meanings, So if you're curious and like
get in there and and any further questions you have,
I'm available.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Amazing. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you so much
for being with us.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Such a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (58:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
Wow, that was honestly one of my favorite interviews that
we've done with anybody.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
It's not easy to strike a balance when you're talking
about something like this, and she struck it. She just
is so honest, her intentions are so clear as she's
speaking what she's doing. I mean, I also cannot wait.
I'm not joking. I cannot wait to see this show.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
No, I can't wait to see either. I think it's
so interesting. It's almost like it's so fascinating because you
have watched for so long, Like this was the era
of like the Nancy Grace, you know, following the all
the crimes that were happening at the time, and this
this took on a life of its own, and it
almost made her a non person when it was being
(59:05):
reported on. It was almost like she was not treated
like a human being anymore. And so to be able
to even sit with her for an hour after I personally,
I mean I moved here in twenty twenty five, I
remember in two thousand and seven watching all of this
in the US, I mean, it was covered daily in
the news. And to sit with her for an hour
and just talk to her mom to mom even, I
(59:27):
just thought it was incredible.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
And my memory of it was also that she was
very much a person to me, but she was a
one dimensional representation of one, because that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (59:40):
Pictures of her everywhere, I can't.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
I mean, someone should look up how many people in
magazine covers she did, right, it was intense. You saw
her blue eyes, you saw her dark bob, you saw
her all the time, but you never heard from her.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
You never heard her speak. I didn't hear her speak.
Speaker 1 (59:57):
So to have this now come about and for her to,
you know, again, be just so smart. And so I'm
guessing that her storytelling is going to be incredibly compelling.
I'm gonna I'm gonna bet on that.
Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Yeah, well, she's incredibly compelling. I mean, I've been in
this hour, so to be in charge of a project
like this, I love the the idea that it's given
her some peace and has felt so empowering. And I
want to listen. I want to know the story with
the prosecutor because I get the feeling that he didn't
(01:00:30):
get off on the roof and say I'm.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
So sorry it was wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Yeah I know, yeah, And I loved I loved that
she You know, so much of healing, healing is what
you get, You earn healing by grieving, and it sounded
like she.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
She really dipped into that, so I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Well it sounds like Grace, Oh my gosh, she's such
a great actress.
Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Well it sounds like she's completely done amazing work with this. Well,
so I can't wait to see two. All right, guys,
we're gonna wrap it up, but don't forget. August twentieth
on Hulu watch the Amanda Knock Story and let's call
it
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
The end of the episode.
Hosts And Creators
Jessica Capshaw
Camilla Luddington
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