- 14 hours ago
Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky sat down with The Hollywood Reporter and talk about producing their new Hulu series 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.' The pair also discuss how they initially met and bonded over similar shared experiences. Plus, Lewinsky shares how she was able to use her time producing 'American Crime Story: Impeachment' for this new show and how Knox was able to tackle sharing her story on screen.
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00:00Once you've been like labeled and diminished and buried as a human being,
00:04how do you emerge as a person who is more complex and has more value than what society gave you credit for?
00:12I do hope it is getting better in terms of how we might or how the media might treat a young woman if a story like this were happening today.
00:30Hello, I'm Amanda Knox, and I'm Monica Lewinsky, and we are very excited to speak with THR about our new series,
00:38The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.
00:47Back in 2017, I am a very different person than I am today.
00:52I am pretty much trying to keep my head underground.
00:55I've spent the majority of my adult life feeling like no one cared what I had to say,
01:00and anything I did say was always twisted against me.
01:04And then I find myself invited to go give a talk for the first time ever, and I'm utterly terrified.
01:10I also learned that someone else is going to be speaking at this event,
01:16and it happens to be the one and only Monica Lewinsky, whose Vanity Fair articles and whose TED Talks have given me hope that there might be a path forward in my life.
01:28And so I asked the organizer if I could please, please, please meet her.
01:33I think Amanda was the highlight of that event that day, and people were so, I think they were just so impressed by you,
01:44which I was when we first met, and I had so much compassion for you, and it really was kind of the beginning of us knowing each other.
01:55She made me tea, she was very anxious to know if I was taking care of myself, and gave me a real big sister experience of just checking in on me emotionally and psychologically,
02:07and giving me a lot of advice about what it means to reclaim your voice and to reclaim your narrative, and you've been guiding me ever since.
02:15Wow.
02:16Monica and I are similar in that, like, there is this great desire to connect with people, but having been burned and taken advantage of for so long,
02:26there's a constant sort of terror that other people are going to take everything away from you again,
02:32and view everything you do or everything you say in the worst possible light.
02:36And I think it was a huge relief, for me especially, to meet you that first time, because it was also at that, like,
02:43moment where I just was having a glimpse into what it might mean for me to try to stand up for myself in a real way,
02:51and with the hope that they would actually see me as a human being, and I didn't know that for sure.
02:56And honestly, like, no one had ever, you know, walked that walk before me than you.
03:01Right.
03:02And that walk is not filled with just all the loving people, you know, opening their arms necessarily.
03:08Like, you really have to fight to prove your worth as a human being when you've been rendered worthless.
03:15Well, I know for me, it felt as if there really wasn't a roadmap.
03:19In terms of trusting people, I think for me, I've always felt really lucky that especially, you know, our situations are really different,
03:29how we came to being public people, but I think with all the betrayal that I experienced, and I don't know if you feel that way.
03:37I called the police to tell them that someone had broken in my home, and then I was very betrayed.
03:42So, yeah.
03:43Yeah.
03:44I think that it was, for me, I've just always considered myself lucky that I still trust.
03:51I'm still optimistic about the world and people.
03:54Maybe that's naive.
03:56I don't know.
03:57So, yeah.
03:58In 2021, I had read a really fantastic interview that Amanda had done in the New York Times.
04:03And in it, she talked about wanting to take her memoir and doing a film.
04:10And I reached out to Amanda to see if there was like any interest, not in a film, but in a limited dramatic series.
04:19And from there, brought everybody together for breakfast.
04:23And then...
04:24Babies included.
04:25Right.
04:26Exactly.
04:27Eureka was there.
04:28Now they're two.
04:29And I think shortly after that, we were, as EPs, we then set out to meet with different showrunners.
04:36Mm.
04:37And had this extraordinary first meeting with the creator and showrunner.
04:41K.J.
04:42Steinberg.
04:43Exactly.
04:44And it was...
04:45It was kismet.
04:46Like, she really understood from the very beginning what was the intention behind this
04:52series.
04:53This idea of a 20-year-old American kid in a foreign country, what does it mean to not
04:58have the sense of language?
05:00How do we look at this anatomy of bias?
05:02And her making that the spine of this series was just really powerful.
05:08This series is not just a courtroom drama that ends when, you know, a man in ox gets
05:13out of prison.
05:14Like, that's typically how you see these stories told.
05:17Like, this story is really anchored in the long consequences of the trauma that happened
05:24in the courtroom.
05:25And how a person rebuilds their life and rebuilds their faith in humanity by taking risks.
05:31Like, there's a story of, like, me, Amanda, taking a big risk to have faith and trust
05:38in people again.
05:39And, you know, the benefits of that and the costs of that.
05:43And I think what was really important to both of us going in was that idea that, like,
05:48there is a life after trauma.
05:50Yeah.
05:51Growth after trauma, there is opportunity.
05:53And you just, it takes a lot of courage and compassion and curiosity to get there.
05:58It would have been so easy to just say, okay, we're going to end at the courtroom.
06:03But by seeing, I think by seeing what happens to people when the headlines quiet down, what
06:09happens when you're sitting back with your family, trying to find a way forward, trying to figure
06:18out who are you now after everything's happened and find a way forward and what it means for
06:25people who are caught in these kinds of headline stories, what it means for their families.
06:30It's also a hope that with some of that understanding, it means that may not happen or happen as badly
06:38to the next person.
06:39Totally.
06:40In order to move forward, I need to go back.
06:44Amanda did an amazing job as a producer, as an executive producer and the subject of both
06:50bringing, you know, her knowledge of the, of her experiences, her creativity, her intellect,
06:57her curiosity, and flexibility.
07:00She was, you know, we joke a lot that she was far more flexible than I was with impeachment.
07:06But, you know, so I think that it is, from my own experiences, it, it is hard.
07:13It's really challenging to wear both hats of a producer and a subject.
07:18Amanda understood intuitively coming into this process.
07:22No one wanted a hagiography.
07:24Everybody wanted a story that was going to feel really compelling, you know, to be revealing
07:31what these stories that people think they know.
07:34And then they watch a show and they, they come to understand something so different.
07:38So, I, I think what was really interesting for me about being an EP on this project without
07:45having to wear their subject hat was seeing just like how many cringe moments I had of like,
07:53Oh, I can't believe I did this on impeachment.
07:56Or I wish I had done that differently.
07:58Or I couldn't understand, you know.
08:00But you were so hard on yourself.
08:02I feel like you were horrifically hard on yourself.
08:05And you gotta give yourself some grace.
08:07That is true. Thank you.
08:08Um, I mean, for me, I felt like I didn't have to feel so frantic because as a creator of this show
08:15and the showrunner of this show, KJ Steinberg, like she got, got it.
08:20When you see these, you know, true crime tragedies portrayed so many times are in black and white narratives.
08:27And I really was afraid that I was going to have to push back constantly against the scandalization of it or the mustache twirling of it.
08:37And it's like, no, she like, she got it from the very beginning that like the anatomy of bias is this true thing
08:44that we as human beings are doing our best in the world and we're bumping into each other.
08:48And there's a perfect storm of personalities and circumstances that lead to misunderstandings and injustices.
08:55And the fact that like she got that gave me peace of mind.
09:00She wanted to break the mold of this being a true crime drama or a biopic.
09:05And, and really, I think that she, her vision in that sense was, was to see you and feel you in this show.
09:14And then support me too.
09:15Like she invited me to co-write the final episode with her.
09:18Like no one in my position is ever given that kind of respect and opportunity.
09:24And so like, I'm so lucky and I feel so supported.
09:28And like, I mean, that's one of the overall things, like shocking things about the doing this whole series was again,
09:35after like years of feeling like my life didn't matter and that I didn't matter.
09:41Suddenly I'm in a room full of hundreds of people who all are doing their best work because they feel like it matters.
09:51And like, it's, it's, it's surreal.
09:55Like the shock of that, I had just kept hitting me over and over again.
10:01That like, I, like I felt cared about as a human being through this process in ways that I was not expecting to.
10:09So again, I think I have to stay mom with a killer on the loose there.
10:16I'm sure the police will protect me.
10:18That interrogation room with that was the one that I was most concerned about getting right.
10:24Because in my advocacy work, the greatest difficulty that I have is trying to convey what it feels like to be behind a closed door and at the mercy of authority figures.
10:39And there's a deep resistance, I think on the part of those of us who have not been in those situations to acknowledge that there is a deep traumatic interaction happening there.
10:52And, you know, I'm very actively trying to like re reframe an understanding of what is happening behind closed doors in interrogation rooms.
11:05And so I, and there was, there's so much like, there's so much at play there.
11:10The dynamics of it are not as clear cut as we see on like TV shows where it's just, you know, this cartoonish interaction.
11:18It's way more complicated and nuanced than that.
11:21There were multiple people in that interrogation room with me.
11:24Some of them yelling at me, some of them hitting me, others comforting me and coaxing me, others giving, you know, like there was a lot happening.
11:32And it was happening in a moment when I was deeply emotionally vulnerable.
11:36I was very young.
11:37I didn't know what was going on.
11:38And one of the things that, one of the big challenges was not just wanting to convey what it's like to be coerced into implication.
11:48To be coerced into believing that you might have witnessed a crime.
11:54Like there's a, there's a subtle psychological shift that happens that is deeply traumatic and is very real.
12:02And yet it's so difficult for people to understand.
12:05And so like I was on the edge of my seat, those two days of filming, watching poor Grace, poor Grace.
12:14Who's unbelievable.
12:15Who's unbelievable.
12:16Unbelievable.
12:17But just like go through this like psychological journey over and over and over again.
12:22Never missing a beat.
12:24Like all, like just amazing, just shocking.
12:27And like feeling like she got it in that moment and, and, and seeing it happen before my eyes.
12:36Like that was the most tense I was.
12:39And I think I was crying at the end of it all, not just from like, Oh God, here's the worst experience of my life all over again, but also with relief that we had gotten it right.
12:49And I really feel a deep responsibility to get it right because I'm not the only person who's ever been wrongly convicted.
12:55I'm not the only person who's ever been coerced into falsely confessing.
12:59And I feel like it's really a really important part of the series is really revealing that psychological journey.
13:05These are the kinds of things that I think people will be surprised by when they watch.
13:11I mean, I myself like coming into this story.
13:14I had so much compassion for Amanda.
13:16And I also realized how little I knew how much I had gotten wrong.
13:21And you've been interrogated too.
13:23Exactly.
13:24This is my life we're talking about.
13:32And I think it all goes back to how does the human mind work and how do we get things wrong?
13:38And how are we quick to judge?
13:40And how are we projecting our, our fears and our fantasies onto people?
13:44And I think it's really easy, especially to project our fears and fantasies onto women because we are objects of other people's fantasies.
13:52And I think that, um, and, and because of that, there is this impulse to, to label us, to judge us, even amongst each other.
14:00You know, there wasn't just men who were at the helm of my, you know, persecution.
14:05There were a lot of, you know, women who were invested in it as well.
14:09And I think that I wonder, like, I think it's worth questioning, like, where is that coming from?
14:15Where is that impulse to judge and condemn and to label and to diminish a woman coming from?
14:21And one of the things that I was so troubled by in my own experience was seeing how women are pitted against each other.
14:29How we're sort of put into these dichotomies of the virtuous and, and the vice.
14:33And we are meant to represent these ideals instead of being allowed to be the, the flawed and fragile human beings that we all are.
14:41And that we're not given the grace to be complicated.
14:45In some ways, what is the worst aspect of it is that this, the kind of, um, the misogyny becomes internalized misogyny, not just for the person who is the target of this, but for all women.
14:59For all women, all women end up consuming, you know, this media.
15:04And I think that from that, we find, um, we find different ways that it, it, it kind of permeates our society.
15:11Um, it permeates the way we think about ourselves and feel about ourselves.
15:15So it is, I do hope it is getting better in terms of how we might, um, how we might or how the media might, uh, treat a young woman if a story like this were happening today.
15:31Yeah. Um, I, well, and that's why it's so important to show the afterwards because it's like, once you've been like labeled and diminished and buried as a human being,
15:41how do you emerge as a person who is more complex and more, you know, has more value than what society gave you credit for and to stand up for yourself like that takes, well, not balls, something else.
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