Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox have teamed up for a new limited series based on Knox’s life, and according to the duo, it was actually the number of “surprising parallels” in their lives that brought them together.
Appearing on “Good Morning America” on Monday, the two women recalled becoming aware of each other via news coverage; Lewinsky became a national name due to her affair with former president Bill Clinton, while Knox was accused of murdering her roommate in Italy. Of course, Lewinsky’s scandal happened years earlier, so she recognized some patterns immediately.
“I had seen Amanda really blossom in this article that was in the New York Times, and she mentioned wanting to do a film of her memoir,” Lewinsky explained. “I had a first-look television deal at the time and I thought, ‘A-ha! Another young woman who had suffered in the media, had been feasted on on the world stage.’”
Once they teamed up for “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox” — both women are executive producers for the Hulu limited series, which premieres on Wednesday — Knox noticed similarities of her own.
“Surprising parallels, too. Like, we were both interrogated,” Knox said. “We’ve both been, you know, viciously turned into caricatures of ourselves in the media. And I think that the thing that we actually were both most interested in was making sure that this show had a wider lens.”
Lewinsky readily agreed, specifying that the wider lens meant looking “beyond what happens with young women who get thrust onto this stage and feasted on” and seeing what kind of effect that has.
“What happens is all women internalize that message, and all women then end up as collateral damage,” she said.
You can watch Lewinsky and Knox’s appearance on “GMA” in the video above.
