Why Amanda Knox is using comedy to reclaim her story

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Support for Here & Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
WBUR podcasts, Boston.

**Amanda Knox** (0:20)
If anything, the criticism that has been leveled at me really proves the point of the show, which is that one of the ways that women experience violence in the world is in finding fault in them, even when they are the victims of a situation.

**Kalyani Saxena** (0:36)
How Amanda Knox is using a comedy show to retell her life story.
It's Friday, August 21st, and this is Here & Now Anytime. From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Kalyani Saxena. Today on the show, we'll hear about a new kids' book from actor John Leguizamo.

**John Leguizamo** (1:03)
You know, Latino children are the least represented in children's textbooks. You are more likely to see the face of an animal than you are a Latin child. And we're 30% of the US population in public schools. What does that do to a child's self-esteem?

**Kalyani Saxena** (1:17)
But first, Amanda Knox. She was just 22 years old when she was wrongfully convicted in Italy for the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kircher.
Knox spent four years incarcerated in an Italian prison and became the subject of tabloid scrutiny for a crime she didn't commit.
In the years since her exoneration, Knox has become a writer, producer, mother, and a vocal advocate for the wrongfully convicted. She's also released two books about her story. Now she's dipping into a new lane. Comedy.
Knox just wrapped up her first ever one-woman show Cartwheel at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. And unsurprisingly, it garnered a lot of media frenzy, criticism, and mixed reviews. Indira Lakshmanan spoke with Knox about the show and the reaction.

**Indira Lakshmanan** (2:12)
So I want to start by reading from the playbill of your one-woman show Cartwheel. It opens like this. Amanda Knox is approaching 40, juggling motherhood, and finally getting around to being furious about the whole wrongful imprisonment thing, especially when half the world is telling her to get over it while the other half still thinks she's guilty.
All right, tell us more. Why did you decide to set out this monologue?

**Amanda Knox** (2:38)
Part of it was rage.
I've spent a lot of the years since surviving this incredibly traumatic experience, coming to terms with it and being at peace with it. My book, Free My Search For Meaning, is very largely an attempt to process it with some grace.
I come out of that experience of going back to Italy to confront my prosecutor having made peace with the man, and I come home to a reality that is still an open wound for me.
What happened to me, what happened to my roommate, is proof that this world is not safe for women, that there are dangers, there is unfairness, and as a mother, I'm raising my daughter in this world that has been deeply unfair and unkind to me, and people that are close to me have been deeply hurt. So how do I address that issue as I raise my daughter, and I have a lot of fear around intergenerational trauma, about projecting that onto her, and of course, my daughter is this precocious four-year-old girl who's deeply empathetic and has lots and lots of questions. And so as I approached this story, I was thinking how do I tell something that is, first of all, embodying who I am. I don't consider myself a traumatic figure. I've gone through a traumatic thing in my life, and most people associate me with a very traumatic thing in my life, but I am a very lighthearted, silly, like uplifting kind of person, especially around my children. And so wanting to have the opportunity to present that side of myself, while also addressing a sort of open wound that I have and open questions that I have about what it means to be a woman in the world.

**Indira Lakshmanan** (4:22)
Well, you bring up what it means to be a woman, and it strikes me that you were immediately after this horrific crime, your roommate was sexually assaulted and murdered, you were branded with a scarlet letter for being supposedly a harlot, and Italian authorities came down on you and tried to finger you for the crime, and you were initially convicted.
And you write a lot about the misogyny against women, that not only was your roommate murdered, but then the closest woman to her in proximity was then branded with the crime. You bring up your daughter in this show, and while she didn't accompany you on stage, the audience hears her voice played as a recording throughout the show, as if you two were in conversation. And I'm wondering, what are you trying to say about women and girls in society by making your daughter have such a prominent role too?