Hulu reenacts the all-too-familiar and Twisted Tale Of Amanda Knox

The murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007 has a different name unfairly associated with it, that of her former roommate, Amanda Knox, who was arrested along with her Italian boyfriend for allegedly committing the crime. By 2011, after being subjected to consistently shoddy tabloid coverage, their initial convictions were overturned, and she arrived home to Seattle to a continued media frenzy. In 2016, a Netflix documentary delved into the time she spent in prison and the appalling ways in which the cops treated her and Raffaele Sollecito. Most recently, Knox’s conviction of slander against her boss in Perugia was upheld earlier this year. She’s also authored a couple of memoirs, hosted podcasts, and even made a cameo in Peacock’s Laid in 2024. Knox has been in the spotlight for almost two decades, with her well-known saga now being told in a Hulu limited series (that she produced and was actively involved with).  

The Twisted Tale Of Amanda Knox won’t strike anyone familiar with the situation as particularly shocking or illuminating. The eight installments retell her experiences as a 20-year-old vilified by the press, the prosecutor, and the public, as well as her fight for freedom and attempts to convince the world she did not kill Kercher. Despite only a few fresh insights, the show is a pretty moving condemnation of the botched investigation and language barrier that put her behind bars, not to mention the unscrupulous ways in which her behavior was scrutinized in a rush to declare her a culprit. Crucially, it digs into the emotional and mental aftermath on Knox (Grace Van Patten), Sollecito (Giuseppe De Domenico), and their respective families. The true-crime saga is anchored by a powerful lead, but there’s no denying that Twisted Tale is a double-edged sword. 

Enough attention has already been given to Knox’s tribulations, partially because she’s a white American woman who seemed to captivate everyone. A made-up narrative about her sex-fueled adventures spun out of control to attract more eyeballs—she was maligned with the nickname Foxy Knoxy—while the actual victim or the offender, Rudy Guede, barely made headlines. (In the aforementioned doc, The Daily Mail‘s Nick Pisa talks about why she was an appealing subject, whether guilty or not, as opposed to anyone else.) Hulu’s series addresses these problems infrequently but also contributes to them by focusing almost entirely on stuff we’ve seen, heard, and read about before. Twisted Tale raises the unavoidable question of why it dredges up a story that’s already been examined in different ways, especially when there are numerous falsely imprisoned folks (disproportionately people of color) who do not receive a fraction of the consideration this specific case has gotten for 18 years and counting.