Amanda Knox (best of)

24:58Gwyneth Paltrow:Up until the point you're arrested. And then it becomes an interrogation and there are rules. Yes. So you're subjected to this for days, hours? Yeah, days. I was giving sort of witness statements throughout the days leading. And he did this like calculation of how much time I was actually in the police office answering questions. And it was 53 hours over five days. So over 10 hours a day, I am just with the police answering their questions over and over and over again. What point in those 53 hours did you start to think, are they seeing me as a suspect in this? I didn't know I was a suspect until I was already days in prison and I was brought before a judge who then told me that I was being accused of murder.

25:45Even during my interrogation, they never explicitly accused me of having committed the crime. What they accused me of was covering for the murderer. And who did they suppose the murderer was? They didn't know at the time, but they said that they knew. They lied to me. And they said that they knew that I was covering for him. And what they did was they suggested to me who it might be. They took my cell phone and they saw that I had exchanged messages with my boss. I was doing like part-time job waitressing at this local pub. And they saw that I had received a text message from my boss the night of the murder where he said that it was a slow night and I didn't need to come into work.

26:27And I had responded back saying, okay, have a good night. See you later. But the police interpreted that message to mean that I had met with him that night, which would have contradicted the stories that I had been telling them, that I was with my boyfriend that whole night. And so they said, we know you're a liar. We know you met with this person. We know you witnessed this crime. What did he do? When your Netflix documentary came out,

26:51Gwyneth Paltrow:however many years ago that was? That was 2016. So a fair amount of time ago, you know, my heart broke for all of you, especially your parents. Like I can't imagine to feel so powerless and to have you so far away and how much of a tax it must have been on them financially, emotionally, everything in order for them to come and to have you defended. And, you know, to your point, it's trauma on top of trauma. It's circles of trauma. It's your family. It's your friends. I always think like when something happens, that's like emotionally overwhelming, it's sort of like a car crash. You know, you've like this shock.

27:28Gwyneth Paltrow:It's so hard to connect. Like I feel out of body. So when the shock started to subside, did it, or was it just ongoing because you were in prison and then you had to stand trial and then you were found guilty and it was a whole nightmare until you were released? Yeah. And thank you for mentioning that about my parents, because something that was really important for both me and Monica with this series was to show that. Yeah. So will you just talk about your co-producer? Yes. Okay. So Monica Lewinsky is an executive producer on this show. She was the one who came to me and said, let's make a show together.

28:06And of all the people that I could trust, here's this woman who has gone through her own incredible vilification and shaming in the public and attacked in such a personal, personal way and expected to be buried. Like she has been forging this path forward to show that it is possible to survive that. And it is possible to build yourself a platform and share your truth. So like when she came to me, I was thrilled to partner with her because she already had been a mentor for me in many ways. And like, we both agreed from very early on that there were some things that this story could tell that we wanted to break out of the mold of like both true crime and biopic right like the story isn't just about a bad thing that happened to a young girl in a foreign country it is about the long tail of trauma it is about those concentric circles of trauma it's about trying to make meaning out of the bad things that happen to you so that your agency has been stolen from you in your own life you feel like you can reclaim it and you feel like you're the protagonist of your own life again, instead of just somebody else's victim.

29:17You take the steering wheel back. You make choices that are meaningful to you instead of being at the mercy of other people's choices, you know? So like, it was really important for us to show that it wasn't just me who was traumatized. And they're, again, sacrificing everything. Their whole lives became about saving me. And how are they then, in Italian you say metabolizzare, how are they processing that in the aftermath? And does it create tension? Does it create connection? And how do we navigate that? So that's something that was really important to us. But yes, in those early days, and you know, those early weeks, like a lot of people ask me if like, I'm embarrassed by those early days.

30:00And like, you know, I've been really judged for those early days and how I reacted. And you know, was I doing yoga in the police station, because I was sitting on these like hard chairs for hours on end. And then I would get up when they stopped questioning me and I would like do some yoga stretches and people are like, aren't you embarrassed by that?

30:18Gwyneth Paltrow:Why? Well, because they say that I was being flippant. I'm not like sobbing in a corner, like I should be. I'm like sitting there doing yoga. I've been so judged for those early days and I'm not embarrassed because I was just a kid. You know, I had no idea how to navigate. I'm a kid. If I had to sit for 10 hours on a hard thing and I wasn't being allowed to leave, like I would get up and stretch it, especially if I didn't fucking do anything wrong. Well, I think that it's interesting how in retrospect we find fault in people, especially women. When we want to find fault in people, especially women, we find the most stupid things to like find fault in and to imbue with not just like a salacious narrative, but like a malicious narrative.

31:06Why? Why do we do that? That is the question, my friend. Why do we do that? I mean, I'm trying to figure it out. I don't have all the answers. You know, Monica is trying to figure this out. I'm trying to figure this out. And we're noticing a pattern. We're noticing the pattern that when a narrative takes hold, it is a boulder that is like falling down the hill and accumulating stuff on it as it goes along. And that's what this narrative about me felt like. How well do you know the case? Do you know that we know who committed the crime? Yeah, okay, great. Well, some people don't know that. You'd be surprised the number of people who still - And he's free, right?

31:44Yes, he's free. And he's on trial again for stalking and sexually assaulting another young woman who thankfully survived this time. But here we are. And nobody knows about that because he was never the story. The truth of what happened to Meredith was never the story. It was always the scandal, the idea, this like pornographic fantasy about what could have happened to Meredith if her roommate was the one who was guilty.

32:11Gwyneth Paltrow:Not only her roommate, but her sort of snow white looking, beautiful American roommate. Yeah, it didn't hurt the narrative that both Meredith and I were young and beautiful and had our whole lives ahead of us. How do you think the pulchritude plays into these things? Like, I really find it fascinating that for some reason, if a beautiful woman is seen to have done something illegal, outrageous, even just rebellious, that the vitriol or the fascination, this sort of femme fatale narrative that will come around, like, did you contemplate that? Do you think it would have been like this if you weren't as beautiful as you are?

32:56I don't think the case would have reached the level of exposure that it did were both Meredith and I not beautiful young women. And we were young enough that we were not fully developed people, which meant that we were very easy to project upon. It's not like we had a history of a career and an established sense of identity, especially in this place. Because this didn't happen in my hometown. It didn't happen in Meredith's hometown where we were surrounded by people who knew us. We were wild cards. And it was very easy for people to see what they wanted to see. And I think subconsciously even, people were both attracted and repulsed by me as a young, you know, naive woman.

33:50And it gets gross, right? Like, cause in the early days, there's a police officer who very openly admitted that like one of the ways that they knew in their gut that I had something to do with the crime was because I smelled like sex, which to me just suggests very strongly that there are a lot of men who were subconsciously producing a narrative based upon their own impulses instead of being able to clearly see the scenario for what it was. But to give the police the benefit of the doubt, which is something that I truly believe in, which was not given to me, but to give it back, you know, to pay it forward, what did the police come to?

34:33What was their context? Well, this is a small town where the worst crimes that happen are petty theft and petty drug dealing. Like it's a college town. That's the kind of stuff that they're used to and they're worried about. And a music town. It's a music town. It's a chocolate town. Like it's a tourist town. They're not dealing with murders every day. So for there to be not just a murder, like in a dark alley somewhere, but like someone broke into our home and attacked my roommate when she was getting ready for bed, that was a huge threat. It was very scary, very immediately. And because there was the international student element, it became an international story very immediately.

35:18And so from the get-go, the police and the prosecutor, who in Italy, prosecutors lead, they direct the entire investigation, felt under pressure to deliver answers very, very quickly. And what did they see when they arrived at the crime scene? Well, they saw a couple of things. They saw two roommates, one of whom was crying hysterically, and one of whom was a deer in headlights. And they noticed the difference. They noticed that there was a break-in, but not a lot of things were stolen. And in fact, from the very beginning, they thought nothing was stolen. It turned out that, you know, Meredith's wallet and her phones and all of that had been stolen.

36:06But in the immediacy, they were like, weird, nothing's been stolen. So we don't think this break-in is real. They made a snap judgment that the break-in was not real and then logically deduced everything from that snap judgment.

36:22Gwyneth Paltrow:What about the DNA in the toilet? Yeah, well, in the early days, they hadn't the DNA yet, right? Again, you know, it would be great if we could have, from day one, known whose DNA was there. But they were still gathering that information and analyzing it by the time they arrested me, by the time that they had already had in their mind an idea of what they believed happened. At which point, like you said, they start searching for proof of, consciously or unconsciously, a proof of what they already believe.

37:03Gwyneth Paltrow:Is it right that you're friends with him, friendly with him now? Yeah, I would say that we are certainly friendly. Yeah, a lot of people are like, are you friends? And it's like, well, define friend. There is mutual respect. respect there is mutual trust and care in the sense that like I care how he feels. This is so interesting I mean because he then carries the shame of having done that to someone right? He has his own ideas about what he did but the facts are he imprisoned an innocent young woman and made a spectacular of somebody's life erroneously. So what was it like for you to sit across from him?

37:51Gwyneth Paltrow:I guess, why was it important for you to do that? And what did he say to you? The first time I reached out to him was right before the pandemic. Of course, I didn't know the pandemic was going to happen. But like in my brain, I was thinking a lot about how the adversarialness of this whole story sort of set us up for disaster. I was haunted by this why question. Why me? Why did he target me? Why did he make up this crazy stuff about me that is just like utterly unsubstantiated by anything? Like it goes against all of the evidence. There was zero physical evidence of me at the crime scene. Like, why did he think that I was in there stabbing my friend to death when there's copious DNA of someone else.

38:34Like why? I was really struggling with that in a bad way. Like I was in pain and I didn't want to be in pain anymore. It wasn't enough for me to just think he's a bad guy because it's not true. It's more complicated than that. And I wanted to know why I wanted to understand. And I thought that the only way I would ever understand is if I just asked him and if I could just sit in a room with him that's not a courtroom or not an interrogation room, maybe, just maybe, this person could see that I'm not the monster that he made me out to be. That's what I initially wanted to do. And so I reached out to him and asked to meet in person.

39:17And then the pandemic happened.

39:18Gwyneth Paltrow:What did you write to him? And what did he write you back? I thought long and hard about how to do that. And I came up with a method that I actually tattooed on my arm. This is the method that I used to confront my prosecutor. The first step is this Venn diagram, which is find common ground. The second is a helmet, which represents the steel man. I'm sure you're familiar with saying you're attacking the straw man, which means you're attacking the weakest form of another person's argument. Attacking the steel man or acknowledging the steel man means that you are able to appreciate the strongest form of another person's argument so that if you were to repeat it back to them, they would say, yes, that is what I believe.

39:57The third one is a heart, which means have compassion. So even if a person is wrong and believes some cuckoo bananas, fricking thing, have compassion for the fact that they have a history and a context that led them to arrive at that conclusion. And the fourth is the delta symbol, which means change. So be willing to change yourself before you expect another person to change.

40:22Gwyneth Paltrow:And what came first, that process or the letter? This process was something that I was trying to figure out. I mean, my entire adult life, I've been immersed in difficult conversations and I've been immersed in adversarial conversations where everyone sort of expected the worst of me and has viewed, sort of cherry picked everything that I've said in the worst possible way. And so I've had to learn to like navigate that and articulate myself very clearly and to make sure that as best as I humanly can, I am making my intentions, not just, you know, what the things that I'm saying, but my intentions behind the things that I'm saying very clear.

41:04And I've also had to walk away from conversations because I knew that opening myself up, it doesn't just mean like being a doormat and letting anyone just walk all over me and say whatever they want to me. I do have boundaries. So how do I open myself up and establish boundaries? And part of this is the process. And like one of the best ways I have found of diffusing an adversarial environment is just spending some time acknowledging what we all have in common. So when I reached out to my prosecutor, here's a man that I don't know from any random person. All I've ever seen him is in the interrogation room and the courtroom where he has been hell-bent on destroying my life and vilifying me.

41:45That's all I know about him. Except I also know that this case has been huge in the media, and he also has been represented in the media, and I bet that he probably feels misrepresented in the media. So I start out the conversation by saying, dear Dr. Giuliano Magnini, I don't know who you are. I have an idea of who you are. My idea of who you are is you're this very scary man, this very scary and powerful man who tried to ruin my life. I don't think that that's a fair idea of who you are. Just like I don't think it was a fair idea of who I was the way that you represented me in the court and the way that the media represented me out there in the world.

42:37I want to know who you are. So could we please put aside, you're the prosecutor and I'm the defendant, and just look each other in the eye and have a conversation as people? And at first, he had no idea what to do with that. And to his credit, because it's not done. That kind of conversation between a prosecutor and defendant just doesn't happen. He actually was like, I don't even know if it's legal. And I was like, well, I promise you it's not illegal because it's never happened, so there's no law about it. But like, whatever. Even when I was talking to my other exoneree friends ahead of doing this, I was telling them that I was feeling this like deep instinct to reach out to him.

43:18And they were like, why? Why would you have a useless conversation with somebody who's clearly deranged and is not going to actually meet you halfway? And like, I didn't have an answer for that. I was like, well, fair point. A lot of my exoneree friends were like, prosecutors do not admit that they were wrong. But it just doesn't happen. They're not incentivized to do it. They have every reason not to. So why are you wasting your time? And I couldn't prove them wrong. But I still felt drawn to this human, maybe because I had felt so dehumanized. And I wanted a human interaction.

43:58Gwyneth Paltrow:We come across people in our lives that are of great consequence. Sometimes we choose them. They're a parent or we choose them. They're a partner. To have someone of such consequence in your life that was thrust in there, I mean, it's - And a complete stranger. And a complete stranger. Can I just say, like, it's incredibly sophisticated emotionally and intellectually and spiritually to want to do that and to think about the wholeness of a person and to find forgiveness through those channels. It's like pretty elevated stuff. I mean, I've had a lot of time to like sit and think about it, I guess.

44:41I don't know. Like what else was I doing in there? Sit-ups, you know? I'm a very curious person and I'm not satisfied with easy answers, which means that I have to be willing to do a very difficult thing in order to receive and hold the difficult answer. So what did he write you back? So we ended up corresponding for two years before. And, you know, in the show, we like didn't have enough space to show like that two year correspondence. And so it sort of got very beautifully and thoughtfully collapsed into some very concise scenes, especially the scene where I go back to Italy and I confront him in person.

45:22And we have that conversation finally face to face, eye to eye. But I think, again, always trying to be guided by finding common ground and trying, again, to really appreciate where someone was coming from when they arrived at a certain set of beliefs. My prosecutor is from a different country and a different culture and a different generation. And he has been haunted. You know, he hunted a serial killer in Italy. Did he catch him? No, it's an unsolved crime in Italy, the Monster of Florence case. And he was hunting the serial killer and never got it. And part of the reason why he believes he was never able to solve the crime was because there was a conspiracy afoot, that there was like political intrigue involved.

46:10And he's also someone who has spent his career fighting mafia and corruption. And so he has this innate sort of bent towards seeing the world through that lens. And I think that he approached this case. What happened to my roommate was horrific. And I think it triggered him to interpret reality in a certain way.

46:40Gwyneth Paltrow:We're full of things that we bring to a situation. and it can be so dangerous. We are not blank slates. We have a lens through which we observe and understand reality and I think he is someone who believes in himself and believes in his ability and that's both a good thing and a thing to be careful of. Did he apologize to you? Well, I don't want to give away anything. I'm not going to give away anything, but what I will say is that we continue to correspond to this day. He was texting me earlier. I'll tell you how I came away. I entered into that conversation feeling like he was the one who had all the power and I was the one who was at his mercy.

47:24And I walked away feeling like it was the exact opposite. Not only was I unstoppable, I was also deeply responsible. I was now holding a person and their fragility in my hands. And I felt a deep need to care for that because it's a scary thing when someone really truly cares about what you think of them. And I did not expect that. I did not expect him to turn around and care so deeply about what I think of him.

48:01Gwyneth Paltrow:Well, imagine being in his shoes and having to sleep every night knowing what he knows, you know. Right. And like, how much has he really, again, processed? Is it weird watching somebody play you? Sure. Yes. Obviously, yes. But I think the more thing that I feel besides weirdness is how grateful I am, because I feel like for the longest time, the burden has been on me to represent myself and explain myself. And now I have someone I can share that with a little bit. and she's so graceful about it. She's so smart and so empathetic. I see similarities. I'm very curious. I'm always trying to get to the more complicated, layered answer.

48:47Gwyneth Paltrow:And I'm always trying to orient around healing, mine and others. And I do just want to briefly say, I feel extremely inspired by the tact that you took around this. and do you meditate by the way? I do. Okay, cool. I use the waking up app. What do you use? Do you just on your own? I do TM. Oh, okay. Yeah. I've never tried that. This is perfect. So I want to ask you about your healing modalities. Yeah. So I started using Sam Harris's meditation app. Is that what it is? Waking up? Yeah. It's called waking up and it's so good because it's this great gathering place of both just practice sessions, but also like lectures.

49:28And he invited me to do a series of lectures for the app. So if anyone is like more curious about like how I sort of figured out that the healing part of this journey, I did like this whole big series for him called resilience on the waking up app. So I recommend that. But to like answer your question, I didn't discover meditation as a healing practice until after prison and really like last six years that I've been meditating, which is not that long considering this has been going on 18 years. I think I'm grounded in the sense that I do feel empathy for people and I want to feel connected to humanity.

50:07And I feel like any obstacle, including hatred, that puts me at a distance from other human beings bothers me. I instinctually want to break it down. And the thing that has actually really helped me from meditation has been just sitting quietly with yourself, giving yourself the grace and time to just be quietly with yourself. I've noticed how okay I am, no matter what's happening. I am okay. And there's this beautiful like Zen paradox where you and your life are perfect, just the way they are. And they could use improvement. And does that mean that like the world can't be a better place and that I don't have a thing that I have to like fight back against and do the right thing and make the world, you know, like, no, that doesn't mean anything.

50:53But like right now I'm okay. If I stop, I'm okay. And that gives me a sense of confidence and peace instead of like a franticness, you know, do things, be busy. Don't be urgent. Don't be scared. Just be effective, be present and find your way. And you'll find your way in tune with the universe. And, you know, it's not always graceful. It's not always pretty. Like, it's not that I'm, like, super zenned out all the time.

51:20Gwyneth Paltrow:Do you feel that you've metabolized the trauma? Well, here's the thing about trauma. It's not like it just goes away. You just carry it with you, and it becomes a way that you experience the world. But, like, it can either become a way that makes you feel diminished in the world, or it becomes a thing that propels you forward. To give just a very simple example, when I gave birth to my daughter, she just got birthed and was screaming her head off like you would. I knew she was in pain. And I was stricken by the fact that I couldn't take away her pain. And my mom was in the room with me. And I was just like, oh my God, what I'm feeling right now for my daughter, who I'm just meeting for the first time, is exactly what my mom felt.

52:09the entire time I was in prison. And just, whoa, how precious and how fragile is life. And like, how amazing is it that I get to be a mom when not too long ago, I was sentenced to 26 years in prison and that opportunity was stolen from me. So no, I'm not going to take any of this for granted. And also I'm just as helpless as my mom was when it comes to the life of my daughter. who is going to experience her own traumas. And all I can do is help her understand that no matter what happens, she can be okay. And she's not just a helpless victim. She is someone who matters, who can have a say.

52:57Gwyneth Paltrow:What's incredible to me is that this insight that you had, you would not have had that insight had this not happened to you. This tattoo that's going to stay with me, you know, for the rest of my life, that would not be there had this not happened to you. You would not be this person. You would not be in this position of, first of all, having formulated and come to these understandings that you now possess. And you would not be in this position to impact so many people, me included, by the way. Like, this has been incredibly profound for me. Would you go through it again? Do you believe that this is your path and this was part of your story and that you had to go through something this horrible?

53:41I mean, it is my path because this is the path that was given me. And like to your point, in a weird way, I am grateful to my prosecutor.

53:50Gwyneth Paltrow:You know, I once had someone say to me, your tormentor is your mentor. I mean, it's true. If you choose to frame it that way and see it that way and unearth and excavate the lessons and the hardest things that happen to us, there's so much there. And you can flip it on its head because I feel like in a way I'm his mentor now. Certainly. This has been so incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I'm really looking forward to watching it. Also because the story is so interesting, especially, you know, this story of forging forgiveness, forging healing, taking your power back. And congratulations on it.

54:32Gwyneth Paltrow:Thank you. You're so proud of it.

54:38Gwyneth Paltrow:Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.