She also urges the media to put the focus back on victim Meredith Kercher — and not refer to the situation as the “Amanda Knox saga.”
Amanda Knox came out swinging against Matt Damon’s new movie, “Stillwater,” a film largely inspired by the real-life arrest, conviction and subsequent acquittal of Knox and the murder of her Perugia, Italy roommate Meredith Kercher.
In a lengthy thread posted to Twitter on Thursday night, the night before the film opens wide, she asked, “Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER.”
Damon stars in the film as the father of a college student accused and imprisoned in France for a murder she swears she did not commit. “Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter,” reads the official plot.
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Pointing out how a few articles and reviews of the movie have referred to it as a film loosely based on “the Amanda Knox saga,” Knox herself took issue with the fact that her name was the center point of the conversation and not the victim, Kercher.
“I want to pause right here on that phrase: ‘the Amanda Knox saga.’ What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No,” she wrote. “It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede. It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice. In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency.”
“I would love nothing more than for people to refer to the events in Perugia as ‘The murder of Meredith Kercher by Rudy Guede,’ which would place me as the peripheral figure I should have been, the innocent roommate,” she continued. “But I know that my wrongful conviction, and subsequent trials, became the story that people obsessed over. I know they’re going to call it the ‘Amanda Knox saga’ into the future.”
Amanda Knox Reveals Miscarriage, Questioned If Cause Was 'Something' That Happened in Italy
Knox then asked for anyone covering or talking about the incident to keep the blame off her for becoming its central figure, to be sure to note her acquittal and keep adjectives like “sordid” away from her name. She noted that “Stillwater” wasn’t “the first thing to rip off my story without my consent,” calling out a 2011 Lifetime movie starring Hayden Panettiere as Knox, a recent Fox series “Proven Innocent” and some of Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Talking to Strangers.” Noting Gladwell at least responded to her criticisms and agreed to appear on her podcast, she extended that invitation to Damon and director Tom McCarthy — who allegedly told Vanity Fair the movie was “directly inspired” by her story.
“But that didn’t inspire him to ask me how it felt to be in my shoes,” she noted, also taking issue with McCarthy saying they decided to “fictionalize everything” about a piece of her story — that piece being that “an American woman studying abroad involved in some kind of sensational crime and she ends up in jail.”
“Let me stop you right there. That story, my story, is not about an American woman studying abroad ‘involved in some kind of sensational crime,'” Knox said. “It’s about an American woman NOT involved in a sensational crime, and yet wrongfully convicted. And if you’re going to ‘leave the Amanda Knox case behind,’ and ‘fictionalize everything around it,’ maybe don’t use my name to promote it. You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind very well if every single review mentions me.”
Amanda Knox Weighs-in On Nickname 'Foxy Knoxy'
While some of this Knox said she could “mostly forgive,” she took specific issue with some of the liberties taken while fictionalizing her story. Warning: Spoilers for the film follow.
The movie shows the character based on Knox having a sexual relationship with her murdered roommate and, in the end, was instrumental in her murder. “Turns out, she asked the killer to help her get rid of her roommate,” said Knox, “She didn’t mean for him to kill her, but her request indirectly led to the murder. How do you think that impacts my reputation?”
She said this “tabloid conspiracy guiltier version of me” presented in the film only “reinforces an image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person.” She added, “And with Matt Damon’s star power, both are sure to profit handsomely off of this fictionalization of ‘the Amanda Knox saga’ that is sure to leave plenty of viewers wondering, ‘Maybe the real-life Amanda was involved somehow.'”
After joking about her own screenplay idea, Knox once again extended an invitation to both Damon and McCarthy to appear on her podcast. She then reiterated that she “never asked to become a public person” and was only thrust into the spotlight because of Italian authorities and the media.
Even after her acquittal and return to the United States, she wrote, she was “hounded by paparazzi” and found her “story and trauma was (and is) endlessly recycled for entertainment” — all while being accused of “being a media whore” and taking attention away from the true victim, Kercher.
“My only option is to sit idly by while others continue to distort my character, or fight to restore my good reputation that was wrongfully destroyed,” she concluded. “It’s an uphill battle. I probably won’t succeed. But I’ve been here before. I know what it’s like facing impossible odds.”
TooFab has reached out to reps for Damon, McCarthy and Focus Features for comment. “Stillwater” is in theaters now.
Amanda Knox Reacts to Meredith Kercher's Killer Being Released
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