When Amanda Knox was exonerated following a murder conviction and released from an Italian prison 14 years ago, she returned to Seattle with the appeals process still ongoing, full of uncertainty about what the rest of her life might look like. The issue was further complicated by the fact that Italian courts, and one prosecutor in particular, continued to pursue her, refusing to believe her innocence in Meredith Kercher’s murder. Only when she was home did she realize that she had become, without her knowledge, one of America’s most recognizable faces.
In her new book, Free: My Search for Meaning, Knox tells the story of her traumatic four years in prison, and the friendships she struck up with fellow inmates and prison workers to get through it. She also writes about her attempts to make a life on the other side, as she continued to clear her name and became a freelance writer, along with the story of how she met her now husband, novelist Christopher Robinson. Free weaves in insights from Amanda’s interests in Zen Buddhism, comedy, and nerdy pop culture, to give readers a more holistic vision of her personality and continues a project she and Robinson started on their podcast, Labyrinths, where the pair interview artists, journalists, scientists, and comedians.
Knox also writes about the experience of grieving Kercher, her friend and roommate, who was murdered in their shared Perugia apartment in 2007, and her attempts to convince Dr. Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor who tried her case in 2009, of her innocence. Knox and Mignini eventually struck up a moving correspondence, which is still ongoing, and Knox eventually met him outside of the courtroom.
Now the parents of two young children, Knox and Robinson run their podcast and production company from their home on Washington’s Vashon Island. But before the couple headed to New York City for Free’s release, they traveled to Budapest to spend some time on the set of the upcoming Hulu scripted show Amanda, which they executive produced.
“I can’t say much, but it’s going to be really cool,” she said of the show. “Everyone is really, really talented. They’re bringing their best work and such care to the project. It’s very moving.”
Vanity Fair: Your second book is so different from your 2013 book, Waiting to Be Heard. You said that was a story about what happened to you, and this new one is about you. One of the funnier parts of the book happens when you realize you missed four years of pop culture when you were incarcerated.
Amanda Knox: Oh my gosh. I missed Obama! I missed Wall-E. I missed Justin Bieber.
But you also learned that your case had been huge news in America while you were gone. You credit Monica Lewinsky and Lorena Gallo—the members of what you call the “Sisterhood of Ill Repute”—with helping you get through it, but how did you deal with essentially being one of the first people to be “canceled” online?
It was being canceled, but I was also turned into a product. It was a product that was being sold, the product of the woman-hating slut. Right? Similar to Monica—how dare she have an affair? With no one considering that she was just a young girl who was stupidly in love. What did they think was going to happen?
I hate how the media pits women against each other, and that’s what was happening in my own case. This idea that here’s this one archetype of woman and here’s this other archetype of woman, and they are at spiritual war with each other, and it ended in sex and death.
Even after your conviction was overturned, people struggled to acknowledge that they were wrong about you.
Clearly it’s not personal, because whatever it is, they have their own weird little worldview and motivations going on. But why did this story trigger them and trigger them to be so motivated and dedicated? It’s a really good question for a psychologist—why do people get obsessed? I do think that there is something to the fact that from the very beginning, I was both unrelatable and relatable, in the way that the Mona Lisa is captivating because people can’t quite tell if she’s smiling or not or what she’s thinking. I think I was the Mona Lisa in that way.
There is also a rom-com in the middle, when you meet your husband. You fall in love by going to Burning Man. It’s cute!
It’s kind of insufferable in a lovely way. I like calling it a rom-com. I’m going to tell him that. He’s with our kids right now. The hardest thing about the press gauntlet this week is saying goodbye to the kids. I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and they’re both highly attached. I’m their favorite person in the world. It’s so hard. Every morning my daughter, our three-year-old, holds on to my arm and says, “Don’t leave.”
