Why Amanda Knox is using comedy to reclaim her story

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor Raymond James, a firm where wealth management, banking, and capital markets solutions start with the connections between people. That's the power of personal. Disclosures at RaymondJames.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. 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. How Amanda Knox is using a comedy show to retell her life story.

0:48It's Friday, August 21st, and this is Here and 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. You know, Latino children are the least represented in children's textbooks. You're more likely to see the face of an animal than you are a Latin child. And we're 30 % of the U.S. population in public schools. What does that do to a child's self-esteem? 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.

1:36In 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. 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.

2:32All right, tell us more. Why did you decide to set out this monologue? Part of it was rage. You know, 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. And 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. You know, 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.

3:18And I'm, as a mother, I'm raising my daughter in this world that has been deeply unfair and unkind to me and has people that close to me have been deeply hurt. And 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 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, uplifting kind of person, especially around my children.

4:10And 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. 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.

4:58You 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? So my daughter is a very real person. And I think that in a way, it's very easy for people to, I have felt very much treated like an idea of a person. And one of the things that I really wanted when I talked about motherhood in the show, I really wanted to remind people that my daughter is a very real person.

5:39That is literally her voice that you're hearing with me on stage. And she is provoking me in the show to answer some really difficult questions about fairness, about hatred, about people being cruel. And how do we make sense of that? And I have to then convey that to her in an age-appropriate way. And it really boils things down to their most simplified versions that you are hoping to be very honest about. And so I think that was something that was very important to me was one, trying to find language to articulate this really complex human experience of being misunderstood and punished for being misunderstood.

6:23And at the same time, really reminding the audience that when I get death threats directed at my daughter, that is a real human being that they are threatening. And it's interesting to me that the impulse to judge and blame a woman for a crime that was committed against a woman is so deeply twisted because there is no question about what actually happened in this case. We know who committed this crime. And yet the name and the face that is associated with those crimes is a woman when in fact this crime was committed by a man. And I think that looking at the deep ripple effects of that mistaken sort of direction of blame is really interesting.

7:08A lot of your writing and now this stage work of yours is about processing trauma. And I want to ask you, what do you see as the relationship between tragedy and comedy? You know, I was working on a collage project as I was working on this show. And a part of me, like one of those sort of collages that I made that was like vision boarding for this whole show was something that said, I made a vision board that said, comedy, tragedy, what's the difference? And I think that both of these art forms are ones that address the absurdity of the human condition, are ones that really tackle the heightened moments of our lives and try to make sense of them.

7:56And I think that when you look at something tragic or when you experience something tragic, there is always in the yin yang of it all there is always something bright and that is embedded within it some perspective shift in the same way that like having something beautiful like one of the things that i talk about in the show is like i love being a mom i've always wanted to be a mom and yet being a mom and being a woman in the world means knowing that my daughter some at some time in her life someone is going to hurt her and like there's nothing i can do to prevent that how do i prepare her for that.

8:31So with all the biggest joys in our lives, there's this core of pain. In the greatest painful moments of her life, there's this core of deep hope and joy. And so putting those things together in a show that is combining pathos and comedy was an attempt at portraying that. I was thinking about that old saying that comedy is tragedy plus time. and uh and you know you have said that at their extremes laughter and sobbing feel quite similar because both are forms of release so although this is your first one woman show you did have a very brief attempt at comedy a little rollout back in 2023 and i want to play a clip of you when you were invited to join the only fans roast of comedian whitney cummings let's listen hi everyone i'm amanda knox and i'm here because this is my last hour of community service you know whitney asked me if i would be on her roast i thought it was because i was her friend then i learned that insecure comedians always want to follow a performer who has never killed All right.

9:50So Cummings has been a big supporter of yours. Was she the one who convinced you to try out comedy yourself? I mean, yes. And a lot of female comedians who I'm friends with and have met through Whitney have been incredibly supportive and loving and have recognized my sense of humor. I have to also thank my husband, though, who has really been my champion. you know like when he first met me I was working in an underground bookstore trying to disappear and fade away and failing because I was doggedly pursued wherever I went and he was the one who first said like you shouldn't be hiding your perspective and your point of view and your sense of humor but absolutely like Whitney was the first person to really give me that platform and I'm so grateful infinitely grateful to her and then of course all of the comedians who have come into my life along the way.

10:44I want to ask you about the title of your show at Edinburgh. It's called Cartwheel. It refers back to the time in 2007 when you were just 20 years old. You were studying abroad in Italy. And the Italian police claimed that after you were taken into the police station for questioning over your roommate's murder, they claimed that you were doing cartwheels in the police station. You later said that's not true, that you were simply stretching after being held for hours. But I want to ask you about those who say that it's tasteless to refer to something like that, or even to try to make a comedy show out of a period that was so dark, not only for yourself and your mother, but especially for the Kershers, whose daughter was so brutally murdered.

11:34Yeah, I mean a lot of the criticism that came ahead of the show even like being viewed by anyone was coming from a place of a deep misunderstanding of what my show was actually about. Like I was blatantly falsely accused of making a show that was normalizing violence against women and making fun of what happened to my roommate Meredith and that was absolutely false and I have proven that to be the case. So I think that 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.

12:18You know in the way that somebody might blame a rape victim for wearing the wrong clothes or blaming a murder victim for being in the wrong place at the wrong time I think a lot of people have felt the impulse to blame me for the bad things that have happened to me And to continue to vilify me to this day based on false assumptions about me And that's really something that I address in the show because it is an open question for women Like how when bad things happen to us? How do our abusers then twist that around? and try to blame us and find fault in us for that. What I've been really reassured by is how everyone who is an honest, creative person has been deeply supportive and open to the show.

13:00And I have felt greatly, just overwhelmingly embraced by the creative community here in Edinburgh Fringe. And I'm just so grateful to everyone here for making me feel welcome and allowing me to own my own experiences. I wonder how it made you feel to be vilified by Meredith Kirscher's family. They even backed a petition to try to get you to cancel the show. It seems like once and for all you knew how they feel about you. They weren't speaking through their lawyer. They were speaking themselves. Did you ever at any point consider shutting down your show because of the sensitivities? She was British and you were performing in the UK.

13:45you're right um indira that it was um that that was a moment for me it's the first time that i've ever been directly addressed by the family after all of these years after everything we've all been through together it was the first time they ever directly addressed me and it was to falsely accuse me and, um, and demand that I shut up and disappear. And, um, I think that what it reveals is that they have not come to terms with my innocence. You know, in the past through their lawyer, they have criticized anything I've ever done. It's not just the fact that it's a comedy show, anything I've ever done when they have expressed no interest in really understanding my point of view or communicating with me.

14:36And that has been very, very hard. I recognize that they have their own process of grief to work through. And I recognize that. I do not accept, though, being treated like I'm a guilty person when I'm not. Amanda Knox served four years in Italian prison before she was exonerated. She's a writer, activist, and now a stand-up performer. Amanda Knox, thank you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

15:12coming up next oh yummo a dandelion might be the last one of the season ah the voice of my childhood sid the sloth from ice age who i recently learned is played by actor and playwright John Leguizamo. He's having a big summer, by the way, starring in The Odyssey and releasing a delightful new kids' book. After the break, he chats with Scott Tong about the book and the importance of making all kids feel seen.

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16:36Your coffee order became oddly specific. You spent three weeks choosing your mattress. But your laundry routine? That one somehow escaped the redesign. Should that really be the one update you skipped? Consider this the patch. Rinse picks up your laundry and dry cleaning, cleans it expertly, and delivers it back. Sign up today at Rinse.com. Rinse. It's time to be great. Chances are, you've heard of actor, author, playwright John Leguizamo. For kids, he is the voice behind the always trying, rarely succeeding Sid the Sloth in the Ice Age movies. You guys never think I can do anything, but I'm an equal member of this herd.

17:15I made this herd, so you need to start treating me with some respect. For the older crowd, think of Benny Blanco in Carlito's Way, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge. He's also star and writer of the Broadway hit Latin History for Morons. But the summer of 2026 has been his time to shine. John Leguizamo plays Odysseus' faithful, long-suffering blind servant Eumaeus in the Christopher Nolan blockbuster hit The Odyssey. And to many reviewers, his performance is among the best in a field of A-listers, My dad is coming home and in vengeance. Now Leguizamo is publishing his first children's book.

18:00Kiki and the Can profiles a scrappy Latino boy who unleashes his inner artist and inner cultural pride. Still the very busy John Leguizamo found a moment for us. John, welcome. Catch a breath. Yeah, yeah. Good to be here. Here and now. Yes. We're going to talk about this children's book. First, the Odyssey. You play Eumaeus, loyal servant to Odysseus. For those who have not yet seen the film, King Odysseus has gone from the island of Ithaca for two decades. And Eumaeus, all that time tends to his place, his son, his dog. Your character is tormented by rude suitors all around for two decades. He's also blind.

18:38And I want to ask you, were you actually blinded by contact lenses as you were playing this part? Yeah, you know, it's such an interesting role to play because I think what Chris Nolan was trying to do was sort of capture the most loyal character in Western literature, as Christopher put it, and Homer, emerging of the two because Homer was attributed to be blind. So, yeah, the contacts they put on me were made by an expert in L.A. who studied cataracts and painted them. One eye was completely opaque and the other one I could see shapes and light. It was great for me to have to isolate and sort of be in my own mental space.

19:14It made me have to confront a lot of my own self because I couldn't escape to a phone. I couldn't read. I couldn't listen to music. And I had to be assisted everywhere. So that kind of helped me create the character in a way. But it was tough because it was two months of 14 hours a day. Having to lose my sight was a lot. I mean, there is, of course, a vulnerability to it. And let me ask you about emotion. One of the key emotional moments, of course, in the film is Odysseus' return. After two decades, people don't even know he's alive. Your character, Eumaeus, doesn't initially recognize his master until this reveal comes.

19:51And as it were, his eyes are opened. Did I read that you yourself were brought to tears at one point? Yeah, yeah. You know, I was trying to like really tap into like a lot of real emotion. And, you know, you do the simile in your head of what it would be like if I had lost someone like a son. So, yeah, I was moved to tears and moved to a lot of deep, deep emotions that I felt comfortable in sharing with Chris Nolan. Because, you know, most directors go away to the video village. He stays right behind the camera like old school directors. And there's a intimacy that happens and a sharing that happens when a director does that.

20:28Now, the blindness of Eumaeus departs from Homer's text. And I wonder if you've thought about that. On one hand, you've got to make a movie. On the other hand, there's this kind of text. It's been around for a long time. I guess, how did you think about it? Do you think it works in the film? I love the way that Chris interpreted it. I read it as a kid, and then I read it again when I was 19. And I'm rereading it now, the Daniel Mendelsohn one, which I love. And I'm understanding what Chris did. And I think it was brilliant because we're in the modern world now and there's so many interruptions of the gods in the original Odyssey that everything is faded and destined and that we don't believe in that.

21:07And so his taking just one goddess, Athena, and using her sort of as his conscience, I thought was just so brilliant. And making it Odysseus' own hubris, his own limitations and ego that sort of keep him down. It was just a brilliant modern understanding of humanity and taking the old Homer's version and just adapting it enough to make it understandable. All the attention this film was getting, all the downloading of these versions of The Odyssey, I'm reading the Emily Wilson one. The fact that we're just kind of talking about all this, what do you make of it? You know, it's so great that we're talking about humanities, we're talking about literature.

21:46We're talking about the things that really make us so human, the civilizing qualities of our culture. Zeus's law, which is love thy neighbor before Christianity, you know. These are beautiful principles that the Greeks lived by. And we're all reading this, I think, over 300 ,000 copies of The Odyssey sold. You mentioned civilization, and here's the pivot to your book. Nice segue. way. You know, I'm Chinese. I mean, the Chinese civilization continues to talk about how you treat the stranger, right? How you treat the traveler, the ancients, you know, as in the Odyssey. They, of course, understood it.

22:23And here you are in this book, Kiki in the Can, and there's a quote of a mother saying, we have had the great civilizations the world has ever seen. So introduce us a little bit. Tell us who's talking at that point in the book. What's going on here? Okay. Let me just give you the origin story. The love of the stranger in Zeus's law. is to keep civilization because without that, everybody's warring and everybody's destroying each other and there's no moving forward. So in this book, my friend and I from high school, Crash Matos, one of the great graffiti artists of the world, he's the first to put it on canvas.

22:56He's in museums all over the world. You know, we felt erased as young Latino men growing up in New York in the 70s. And then Scholastic came to me and said, you know, Latino children are the least represented in children's textbooks. You're more likely to see the face of an animal than you are Latin child and we're 30 % of the U S population in public schools. What does that do to a child's self-esteem? Was that you in the seventies? Of course. I mean, you didn't see yourself in history textbooks and literature and math class and anywhere. It was crazy, but you saw my culture everywhere in the city, you know, we're equal to white population, but you just didn't see us in the, in these important spaces where a child starts to figure out how to present himself in the future, how to project himself to the future.

23:39Yeah. So me and Karash decided, let's do this story about a kid. The city's beautifying playgrounds and all the kids are painting their heroes and Kiki can't think of any heroes to paint. So he runs home to his mom and his mom gathers the troops, the abuelito, the tia, the prima, cousins, the grandfathers and the aunts. And they all tell Kiki what their favorite heroes are in music, in science, in literature, cuisine. And then he runs back to the park and he paints his heroes back into history. Yeah. And the part I love, I mean, the inside covers, right? You have the names. I mean, you mentioned Luis Walter Alvarez, Nobel Prize winning physicist, Brown Berets.

24:20You have Bad Bunny, of course, Celia Cruz, renowned queen of salsa, on and on. And, you know, Frida Kahlo, the iconic painter, Dara Torres, the Olympic champion swimmer. I'm sort of like an idiot savant of Latin facts, you know, because I started doing research for my son like 20 years ago and I became a fanatic of it because I started to realize our contributions are so massive and yet so erased. Unidos Us and John Hopkins University did a study and found that 87 percent of Latino contributions to the making of the U.S. are absent in history textbooks and in literature. And then when I do the converse and I'm studying it and I find out that we're one of the few ethnic groups that has fought in every single war America's ever had.

25:04We're one of the highest winners of Medal of Honors. 10 ,000 unknown Latino patriots fought in the American Revolution. 20 ,000 has fought in the Civil War. But you never see us in movies or in the Discovery Channel or History Channel or textbooks talked about in these positive, heroic ways. Of course, in this moment, John Leguizamo, we're having a conversation in this country about migrants, about insiders and outsiders, deportations. Is it important for this book to come out now? Absolutely. Unfortunately, because what's happening to Latin bodies and what I have to witness is demoralizing and abysmal and disgusting to see mothers and children and hardworking people who are coming here just to make a better life.

25:44None of them are criminals. And to be seeing them rounded up like that and put in these concentration camps, when you know Latinos are the essential workers who are feeding the whole country, who are building everything and then being treated this way. And it's not the first time. This is like the fourth sort of cleansing of Latin people in America. You know, it happened in the 1930s with the Repatriation Act. They deported 2 million Latinos during the Depression, blaming them for taking jobs. Sound familiar? Then the Wetback Act happened again in the 50s to the 70s. And many American Latino citizens were again rounded up.

26:18So it's like a thing that happens cyclically in this country, but it's not a good look. Following after the 1882 Chinese exclusion law. I mean, this stuff keeps, as you say, coming back. You know, for kids, Latino kids and otherwise, when they come up to you, of course, for many of them, you're one of these heroes. They want to be like you. What is the best way for you to respond to that child? When children come up to me and feel, you know, that they've seen me, you know, I hope that when they see me that they understand that if I can make it, they can make it. When I say study hard, you know, and create your own content, I'm always telling them that.

26:54Yeah, yeah. In the book also, I made sure that everybody got seen. Asian Americans, Afro Americans, and Euro Americans also get seen in the book because we all should be seen. That's what makes us a better country and a stronger people. Yeah. And let me mention briefly, Liz Casale is the illustrator and the book designer. or what's important about the illustrations, how the individuals are drawn? Well, we used Crash's graffiti as the background in realistic scenarios. And then Liz drew the characters into these scenarios. And we tried to add the environment that we all grew up in and then tried to add the color and pizzazz that we saw.

27:34When we saw graffiti, it felt like one of us had survived and one of us was succeeding. Yeah. We've been talking to actor, playwright, now children's book author, John Leguizamo, talking about the book Kiki in the Can, and then, of course, his powerful performance in The Odyssey. John, congratulations on this, the book, and the film. Thanks so much for taking the time. My pleasure. Great talking to you, too.

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