When “This Is Us” producer K.J. Steinberg was first approached to run the re-telling of Amanda Knox’s wrongful conviction in the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, the first phrase that came to Steinberg’s head was “Foxy Knoxy,” what Steinberg calls the “maligning moniker” given to Knox by the press in reference to her supposed sexual deviance that was eaten up by the public.
While Steinberg did not have a “strong feeling” about Knox’s innocence nor her guilt, or even about Knox as a person, she found herself “magnetically drawn” to her story given the “vehement” and even “violent” opinions about her and the case.
Even most depictions of Knox’s story have been governed by outside voices, but ‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox” stands as one of the few projects that has its central figure attached as executive producer. (Knox has produced and written podcasts “Labyrinths with Amanda Knox,” “The Truth About True Crime with Amanda Knox” and TV series “The Scarlet Letter Reports,” but wasn’t involved in Lifetime movie “Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy.”)
“People have commandeered her microphone and tried to supplant her voice with their own,” Steinberg told TheWrap. “A lot of other authors of this story have looked at Amanda through a microscope on her behavior and her inner life, and determined that that behavior was the cause of her fate.”
In addition to Knox and her husband, Christopher Robinson, attached to the Hulu limited series was Monica Lewinsky, another woman who was eviscerated by the tabloid media and whose sexuality was used against her. “If she was attached to the project, that … was another cue to me, that it was a project absolutely worth getting behind and staying with and tackling as honorably as I could,” Steinberg said.
When Steinberg and Lewinsky met, they discussed “the polarization in our political and cultural discourse” and the trafficking of misinformation that made Knox’s story all the more relevant. Steinberg aimed to claw to the center of “why the story was so polarizing, why the villainization of this young woman was so rampant and why it was the story was so sticky that even, almost 20 years later, people are still talking about it.”
After meeting with Lewinsky, Steinberg had to pass the “Amanda-Chris test.” She met with the couple on a several-hour Zoom where she sold them her vision for the series. “We connected on that Zoom, and I found … Amanda’s outlook and her approach to life was really inspiring,” Steinberg said. “She does not have a throughline of anger when talking about the injustice that befell her.”
Steinberg was especially struck by Knox’s resolve to meet with her former prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, over a decade after her sentencing, with Knox’s openness surpassing the bounds of the adversarial relationship the justice system imposed between them.
“He indeed comported himself as her hunter, in my opinion, and her courageousness … [and] compassion with which she reached out to him … in order to put the adversarial system aside and create a new space for them to connect and talk and understand each other and actually get to the truth, that was such a hopeful and uplifting approach to her own healing,” Steinberg said. “Not only was it an inspiration to me, it ended up being the way into the series.”
“The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox” bookends the deep dive into Amanda’s (Grace Van Patten) arrest, conviction, imprisonment and, eventually, freedom with her quest to return to Italy — this time joined by her husband, mother and baby, to meet with Mignini (Francesco Acquaroli), in the hopes that he would finally acknowledge her innocence.
Out of all of Amanda’s complex relationships within the series — from her parents who struggle with the injustices flung upon their daughter; her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito (Giuseppe De Domenico), who is right alongside Amanda in court after just a week of dating; and Meredith, whose friendship felt real to Amanda despite hearing contradictory messages after her murder — Steinberg sees Amanda and Mignini as the “most surprising and defining relationship.” The showrunner likened their adversarial dynamic to that of Jean Valjean and Javert in “Les Miserables,” saying “when it gets quiet and they think about the defining people and events of their lives … Mignini comes up for Amanda and Amanda comes up for Mignini … and that was evident through their correspondence.”
Audiences even get insight into Mignini’s perspective in Episode 3, a tool that Steinberg uses again in Episode 5 when Amanda’s narration is swapped with Raffaele’s. Expanding the perspective beyond Amanda is just one way that Steinberg put a “wider lens” on the story, with the goal “exploring the theme of the anatomy of bias … [and] how false belief takes hold of people, even the best of people, and creates fertile ground for incredible acts of injustice to happen.”
The Hulu series also expands the story beyond where Steinberg said typical true crime retellings would put a “false period” following a verdict or a release from prison, instead following Amanda back home “into her embattled reintegration into Seattle, into her life, into self.” The series follows Amanda through her “discovery that her identity has been not only perverted in the media, but perverted in a deeper sense, and that she had to reckon with the ugliness and really reclaim her identity,” according to Steinberg.
While Steinberg had unprecedented access to Knox to draw from for the later parts of the series, Steinberg struggled to access “the Amanda of childhood” that viewers see head to Italy bright-eyed and bushy-trailed, recalling, “I was trying to capture this sense of eccentricity that the people have often talked about when referring to Amanda,” but limited home videos didn’t quite do the trick.
It turns out the answer was right in front of her in Knox’s favorite movie and her alibi on the night of Kercher’s murder: “Amélie.” “Amélie herself was naive and terribly hopeful and romantic, and it took place in … a beautiful old European city that reminded me much of Italy,” Steinberg said. “Amélie and Amanda both were charmingly willful, and wanting people to have connections where they didn’t or wouldn’t, maybe, and for things to be more beautiful than perhaps they are.”
Steinberg wove in nods to “Amélie” across the series as a way for audiences to understand Amanda’s “inner life” prior to trauma, as well as her coping mechanisms while in prison. “When Amanda was able to connect with that sense of wonder and that Amélie quality that meant that she was able to connect to the older parts of herself that were helping her survive,” Steinberg said, noting the magical realism was also helpful in exploring beauty as well as the “absurdity” that Knox faced.
Margaret Qualley was initially attached to play Knox in the series, but scheduling conflicts prompted a recasting with Van Patten, who’s best known for starring in Hulu’s “Tell Me Lies.” Steinberg calls Van Patten an “authentic talent,” applauding her commitment to learn Italian for the role and ride the waves of Amanda’s various stops in her journey.
“Grace is able to personify the essence of Amanda pre-trauma, before she was warped by … the trauma of loss and vilification and imprisonment, and she was able to play the struggle so honestly and beautifully,” Steinberg said. “And then arrive, later in the series, having let go of the innocence and emerge by the end of the series as this wise and triumphant person.”
‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox” is now streaming on Hulu, with new episodes dropping every Wednesday.
