It’s rare for a true crime series to be produced by the person at the center of the real true crime saga that inspired it, but that’s the case with The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, an eight-part Hulu drama produced by Amanda Knox, an American study abroad student who was accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in 2007. Following a closely watched trial, she served four years of a 26-year sentence before her murder conviction was overturned.
Episode 4, airing Sep. 3, recreates one of the most shocking scenes in the trial. Actor Grace Van Patten as Knox turns heads in the Perugia, Italy, courtroom on Valentine’s Day when she shows up in a white t-shirt that said “All You Need Is Love” in pink lettering.
After Patten’s Knox walks into the courtroom in the episode, the series shifts to fictional footage of Italians being interviewed on the street about Knox’s shirt. One young woman calls it “disgusting” and says “Only a monster could do something like that.” Another man calls it “embarassing.” And a senior woman said Knox “mocks our city” and “mocks our country,” as well as the pain of the Kercher family. Knox’s lawyers are furious and say they never thought to instruct Knox on what to wear in court, but they also have never had a client that has attracted worldwide media attention.
It’s true that Knox even had a smile on her face when she wore the t-shirt, which created a stir. A Daily Mail dispatch titled “All you need is love: ‘Foxy Knoxy’ gives Valentine T-shirt message to murder court” reported that she listened to the Beatles hit “Let It Be” in prison. Newsweek wrote, “Apparently no one on her all-male defense team had thought to coach her on what not to wear when on trial for murder.”
Knox tells TIME that the shirt was a gift from her stepmom: “She knew I was a huge Beatles fan, that I was spending a lot of time singing Beatles songs to myself for comfort, and wanted to communicate love and support to me in this small way.”
When asked why she wore the shirt to court, she said: “Early on during the trial, my attorneys advised me to just be myself. Well, it happened to be Valentine’s Day, and in my everyday life, I would have worn my most ‘love’ themed shirt on Valentine’s Day. Though I was on trial, it was still a day where I felt the urge to acknowledge love in my life, particularly the love and support I felt from my family and friends during this time of hardship.”
Knox hopes the series will be a way for her to reclaim the narrative about her. As she puts it, “It is the story of how a young woman, who survived a bad thing that happened to her, attempts to take her life back. Like all art, it is an attempt to transform raw experience (and in this case, painful experience) into something beautiful, relatable, and ultimately encouraging for viewers.”
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