As the cameras began to roll on Amanda: A Coming of Age Horror Story in Perugia, Italy, Amanda Knox was finally in control of telling her own story of the long fight to clear her name after being wrongfully convicted of a horrific murder.
But any relief must have been fleeting, with the family of Meredith Kercher taking aim at the project.
In one of the most controversial and infamous cases of the past two decades, Amanda was accused of murdering her British roommate in a sex game gone wrong while they were studying abroad in 2007.
She spent almost four years in prison in Italy after being convicted despite a lack of credible evidence and being forced into a confession. A long fight to clear her name saw Amanda exonerated in 2015.
“Meredith will always be remembered for her own fight for life, and yet in her absence, her love and personality continue to shine,” her sister, Stephanie, said upon news of the TV drama.
“Our family has been through so much and it is difficult to understand how this serves any purpose.”
Why was Amanda Knox in jail?
Meredith was just 21 when her body was found, partly undressed with multiple stab wounds in the bedroom of the home she shared with Amanda in November 2007.
Amanda and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, quickly came under suspicion and were tried and convicted before being set free.
Drifter Rudy Guede was eventually convicted of the vicious attack and was released in 2021 after serving 13 years of his sentence.
In the years since her release, Amanda has gone on to make a name for herself as a criminal justice reform advocate and podcaster. On top of the TV drama she is co-producing alongside Monica Lewinsky, she is also set to release a book in 2025 called Free: My Search for Meaning.
The Kercher family lawyer, Francesco Maresca, accused the American activist of using the vicious murder to stay in the spotlight and cash in.
“On the one hand, Amanda says the trial created so much suffering for her, but then she tries to have it all – the fame and the money,” he said.
“She continues to make money from it. This time, she has no qualms about doing it in Perugia, one of the least appropriate places to return to 17 years since Meredith’s death. Knox is only interested in the profits she continues to make from an affair on which she should be silent.”
What movies have been made about Amanda Knox?
The series Amanda is helping to make for Disney+ is not the first time the case has been dramatised for the screen. Hayden Panettiere played Amanda in a TV movie she did not cooperate with in 2011.
Director Tom McCarthy revealed his 2021 movie, Stillwater, was also inspired by the case. That film follows an American construction worker played by Matt Damon who travels to Marseille in France after his imprisoned daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin), professes innocence over murdering her lover.
Amanda hit out at the director after he linked his film to her story. In an essay she wrote for Medium, Amanda said that the fictional character she inspired was portrayed in ways that made her look like a participant in the crime.
“How do you think that impacts my reputation?” she wrote. “I continue to be accused of ‘knowing something I’m not revealing’, of ‘having been involved somehow, even if I didn’t plunge the knife’. So Tom McCarthy’s fictionalised version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guiltier version of me.”
