For most of my adult life, I’ve had a doppelgänger. Not a flesh-and-blood one, but a cartoon version of me named “Foxy Knoxy.” In 2007, I was a sheltered 22-year-old studying abroad in Italy when I was falsely accused of murdering my roommate, Meredith Kercher. In the absence of any credible evidence tying me to the crime, the Italian prosecutor conjured up this femme fatale to justify throwing me in prison.
She was seductive, cunning, duplicitous—and she had my face. The media amplified this character, deploying her in the public imagination for profit. She didn’t just live in the courtroom and the headlines; she was in the minds of jurors and strangers around the world. Foxy Knoxy was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison, but it was me, Amanda Knox, who had to live in that prison cell.
After I was acquitted on appeal in 2011 and returned to “freedom,” I knew that everyone I would ever meet from then on would have already encountered my doppelgänger. I saw it when people looked at me with an awkward, probing eye, from grocery clerks to old acquaintances from school. It was like Foxy Knoxy had just left the room before I entered, leaving behind a charged atmosphere. She limited my career opportunities, my romantic life, my social world.
No matter how affirmatively I tried to reveal the real me—writing my 2013 memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, taking part in a 2016 Netflix documentary about the case—Foxy Knoxy stubbornly refused to disappear. The hate directed at her continued to find its way into my inbox. When my daughter was born in 2021, I received messages wishing that she’d be murdered. Over time, I learned to accept that I would never be able to rid myself of Foxy Knoxy, and that my reputation, as much as it feels like it’s mine, does not truly belong to me.
I’ve written about this insight in my new memoir, Free: My Search for Meaning, and I’ve reflected on it in a series of lectures called Resilience on the Waking Up app. Over the years, I’ve come to understand something that’s true for all of us, but was made glaringly obvious to me: Our public identities live in the commons. They can be shaped, distorted, demolished, or celebrated by others. And if you’re not careful, you can start mistaking your reflection in the eyes of the public for who you really are.
For a long time, I made that mistake. I fought tooth and nail to distance myself from “the girl accused of murder.” I thought if I could just set the record straight, convince the world of my innocence, I would be seen for who I really am. But here’s the brutal truth: I will always be associated with the murder of my roommate, more so than her actual killer, Rudy Guede, who is now out of prison and facing trial for another sexual assault.
I’ve made peace with that. I’ve accepted that many people will remain allured and horrified by the specter of Foxy Knoxy. This peace I feel now comes from realizing that whatever the public may think of me, I am so much more than their opinions and judgments. I’m a mom. A wife. A writer. A podcaster. A comedian. An activist. And now, a television producer.
On August 20, the limited series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox premieres on Hulu, and with it, a new doppelgänger is born. Her name is Grace Van Patten, and she plays me at 20, naive and bewildered—and me at 35, a haunted and determined mom venturing back to Italy to confront the man who threw me in prison. Grace is supremely talented, and watching her embody me on screen is both eerie and beautiful. She brings her own vulnerability, empathy, and intelligence to the role. In doing so, she adds yet another layer to the ever-evolving public imagination of who “Amanda Knox” is. And for the first time, that evolving image doesn’t feel like exploitation or betrayal. It feels like a collaboration.
Because this time, I was behind the scenes. As an executive producer, I made decisions along with the creator and showrunner, KJ Steinberg, and my fellow EPs, including Monica Lewinsky and Warren Littlefield, during every step of the creative process, from casting, to giving notes on scripts, to helping the geniuses in set design and costuming get things just right, to co-writing the final episode with KJ.
The whole endeavor has been an incredibly gratifying experience, because there are hundreds of very talented people working tirelessly, some of them for years, to tell my story in a thoughtful and artistic fashion. And they’re doing it in alignment with my values: Everything is nuanced, there are no black-and-white narratives, no mustache-twirling villains, just flawed and complicated humans. I have come to tears multiple times thinking about the care and respect all these people have shown to me, and to the memory of Meredith Kercher, in making this show.
It reminds me that identity is always co-created. It lives in the space between how we see ourselves and how we’re seen. That’s why The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox feels like a turning point for me. I finally get to confront my doppelgänger face-to-face—not to defend myself, but to explore the full, messy, human complexity of what I went through and to give the benefit of the doubt even to the people who vilified me. And I think that says more about who I am than their accusations ever could.
Because let’s not pretend that reputation doesn’t matter—it does. What people think of you, or about you, determines what doors open for you and who takes you seriously. It affects your possibilities in life, the same way your bank balance does. But hinging your sense of self worth on your finances is just as much a recipe for suffering as hinging it on your reputation, which, as I know, can be wiped out in an instant. You are not your net worth. I am not my Google search results.
Detachment hasn’t come easily to me. I’ve had to learn it the hard way. Through years of speaking my truth and watching people hear it, or refuse to. There’s a kind of Zen paradox at play: It may feel vital to tell your story, but it’s also vital not to become your story. Be the teller, not the tale.
Reclaiming your narrative may mean standing on a stage and telling your story to an audience. It could mean producing a television show about your life. Sometimes it means tucking your daughter into bed and realizing that she sees you not as a symbol, but simply as mom.
That’s the version of me that matters most. But I’m proud of this other version, too—the one you see on your screen. Because she’s not a cartoon anymore. She’s a woman who survived, and who’s still growing. Which is to say, this isn’t the last time I’ll tell my story, because my story isn’t over. And neither is yours. We’re all evolving. We’re all more than the worst thing that’s ever happened to us—or that has been said about us. The challenge is to hold that truth in your heart, even when the world refuses to.
