"She Took Me Under Her Wing" — Inside Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox’s Friendship

By now, you’ve probably heard the story of Amanda Knox, the American student studying abroad in Italy who was accused and convicted of killing her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. Knox was jailed in 2007, convicted in 2009, and acquitted in 2011. The court later convicted Rudy Guede of Kercher’s murder. But over the years, Knox’s story has been twisted and misunderstood.

Between her memoir and the upcoming Hulu series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, premiering Aug. 20, 2025, she’s trying to clear up the confusion.

While Knox produced the show, it was actually Monica Lewinsky, the same woman involved in the Bill Clinton scandal, who approached her about it and also served as an executive producer. What’s interesting, though, is that Knox and Lewinsky had been friends long before the series came to life. Here’s how they met and developed a friendship.

Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox developed a friendship based on the hardships they faced as women who were both under intense public scrutiny in their twenties. Both were placed at the center of scandals or crimes, and, according to them, their stories were largely misrepresented. The media painted a version of their lives as it saw fit, but both women wanted to reclaim their narratives and tell their stories on their own terms.

When Knox decided to speak out publicly for the first time in 2017 to start reshaping how people viewed her, Monica was at the event. Knox says she asked to meet Lewinsky, knowing they had similar experiences of being publicly scrutinized. “She immediately took me under her wing and gave me guidance, gave me reassurance,” Knox admitted during her August 2025 interview with Entertainment Tonight.

She added that Monica became “a model for me,” attributing her friendship with Lewinsky to helping her get through it. “She really held my hand through this journey,” Knox said.

While it took Lewinsky some time to reshape how people saw her, beyond just being the woman who had an affair with Clinton while interning at the White House in the ’90s, Knox saw her as a beacon of hope. Through TED Talks and other public speaking events, Lewinsky showed that it was possible to reclaim her story. Knox thought if Monica could do it, she could, too. And she’s been working at it ever since.

The Hulu series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is Knox’s way of helping people understand what happened in Italy in 2007, both when she arrived as a study abroad student and during the tragic events that followed.

In her 2025 Entertainment Tonight interview, she revealed that it was Lewinsky who approached her with the idea for the show. Together, their goal is not only to clear up the confusion surrounding Knox’s story but also to make it easier for anyone in a similar situation, facing media scrutiny and being misrepresented, to reclaim their narrative and overcome it.