How did Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky meet? Inside their friendship as they team up for docudrama

Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky are two names that have come to represent controversy and worldwide scandal in quite different decades. Knox has been the American exchange student accused and wrongfully convicted for the murder of her roommate in Italy. Lewinsky was the former White House intern who was publicly shamed over an affair between her and then-President Bill Clinton.

Both experienced relentless media scrutiny, and the private lives of both were turned entirely into a public spectacle. Even though Knox and Lewinsky lived their scandals nearly a decade apart, they had their lives shaped by tabloid headlines, public judgement, and lasting battles.

Today, the two women find themselves together in an unanticipated, but potent partnership. Their friendship, which dates to 2017, has supposedly offered them personal solidarity, and also the collaboration on The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, a new Hulu documentary drama that presents Knox’s story from her point of view.

Knox and Lewinsky first encountered each other in 2017, when Knox was preparing to give her first public talk after years of being silent. They met at a hotel over tea, at a critical moment.

According to Distractify, Amanda Knox had recently been acquitted after almost a decade of trials, imprisonment, and appeals in Italy, and she was cautiously beginning her foray into the public sphere.

Lewinsky, who had then begun to speak publicly about her own experience of humiliation and cyberbullying, saw something familiar in Knox’s predicament. According to Knox, Lewinsky almost immediately provided some comfort, lending an ear to Knox’s fears and advising her to seek therapy.

"When we met, I saw in her the pain that I saw in myself. She was desperate to get out of this box she had been put in. But you don’t often see people reclaiming a narrative in public. There wasn’t a road map for us," Monica Lewinsky told Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview.

A look into Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky's relationship and support to each other

Since meeting her, Amanda Knox has referred to Monica Lewinsky as some kind of "big sister," someone who too was made to feel isolated in being reduced to a caricature by the media.

Since then, Knox has written about her relationship with Lewinsky and refers to it as part of what she calls the "Sisterhood of Ill Repute." According to her, women like herself, Lewinsky and others like Lorena Bobbitt are not only shamed publicly, but made into cautionary tales, dehumanised, and stereotyped as sensational stories (The Guardian).

"The hardest thing is conveying what it feels like to be behind a closed door at the mercy of authority figures. There’s resistance to acknowledging the depth of that trauma... Once you’ve been labeled and buried, how do you emerge as someone more complex, with more value than what society gave you credit for?" Amanda Knox added.

Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky sat down with THR and talk about producing their new Hulu series #TheTwistedTaleofAmandaKnox pic.twitter.com/MRSGbEUrQb

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) August 18, 2025

For Monica Lewinsky, providing her support to Amanda Knox was both personal and intentional. After spending decades rebuilding her life after the scandal, she supposedly understood the importance of solidarity among women in similar situations.

That solidarity has now developed into creative collaboration. Lewinsky, who previously worked on as a producer, reached out to Knox with the concept of building a series about Knox's case.

As part of that effort, Lewinsky and Knox, along with their showrunner, and an executive producer, Warren Littlefield, produced The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, which will premiere on Hulu, August 20, 2025. Grace Van Patten, who stars as Knox, provides a dramatized, but empathetic lens to her story.