This news is interesting on multiple levels: actress Margaret Qualley—a model and actress who you might have seen on the Chanel runway recently, in movies like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Poor Things, and Drive-Away Dolls, or on television shows like The Leftovers, Fosse/Verdon, and Maid—is set to take on the role of Amanda Knox in a forthcoming limited series on Hulu produced by none other than Monica Lewinsky. (Lewinsky has had her own fashion moment as of late.)
The series is as of yet untitled, Variety reports, and Hulu has ordered eight one-hour episodes. The official description states that the show is “based on the true story of how Knox was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher and her 16-year odyssey to set herself free.”
The series will be written by KJ Steinberg of This Is Us and Gossip Girl fame; Steinberg and Qualley will also executive produce, as will Lewinsky. The untitled Amanda Knox project now marks the second limited series based on a real person that Qualley has undertaken, following Maid, based on the memoir of the same name by Stephanie Land. Her work on Maid garnered Qualley both a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination; Qualley was also nominated for an Emmy for her role in Fosse/Verdon.
Variety reports that the Hulu series won’t be the first time Knox’s infamous story has made it to the screen, both big and small: in 2011, Lifetime aired the original film Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, and the 2021 film Stillwater starring Matt Damon and Abigail Breslin is believed to have been inspired by Knox’s story. These two projects are in addition to several news special reports and documentaries on the matter.
Knox was just 20 years old in 2007 when her roommate Kercher was brutally murdered in their shared home while both were studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy following a wrongful conviction; in 2015, Knox was, at last, acquitted of Kercher’s murder, and Rudy Guede was found guilty of the crime.
Though Qualley is a talent in her own right, she’s also known as the daughter of fellow actress Andie MacDowell. When Qualley married music producer Jack Antonoff last August, one of his artists—a little-known singer-songwriter named Taylor Swift—was in attendance, and she shut down an entire road.
And as to the Lewinsky connection, who can understand being young and thrust into the public eye unexpectedly more than her? In addition to this project, Lewinsky also co-produced the third season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, called Impeachment, released in 2021 and focused on her relationship in the late 1990s with U.S. President Bill Clinton.
