How to Survive A SCANDAL: Life Lessons from Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox

WHEN AMANDA KNOX WALKED INTO A LECTURE HALL IN 2017 TO GIVE HER FIRST -ing PUBLIC TALK, SHE WAS TERRIFIED. For Years, Her Face Had Been Splasted Across Tabloids, Her Words Twisted Into Headlines, Her Silence Field in By Strangers. Luckily for Her, Sharing the Stage that Day Was A Woman Who’d Been Through The Same Media Media Meat Grinder – Indeed, Who’d Become A Household Name Before She Was Old Ald A CAR.

Knox Begged The Event Organizers for A Chance to Meet Monica Lewinsky Privately. SO, Lewinsky Later Invited Her Up to Her Hotel Room, Made Her A Pot of Tea and Ended Up Sharing The Kind of Big-Sister Guidance that Only a Fellow Scandal-Press Survivor Could.

“She had a lot of advise about reclAiming your voice and your narrative,“ Knox Says. “That ended up being a Turning Point for me.”

KNOX TOOK THAT Advice About Reclaiming Her Narrative Literaly. WHICH IS HOW THESE Two Veterans of the 24-HOUR NEWS CYCLE-AND NOW Friends-Ended Up Co-Producing The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. The New Eight-Part Hulu Limited Series (Out Aug. 20) Dramatizes the Brutal 2007 Murder of Mereduth Kercher and the Media Circus that Followed-A CASE THAT SAW KNOCC Italy, Releentless Pursued by ProseCutors, Twice Convicted and Twice Acquitted, All While Being Turned Into Shorthand for Suspicion and Scandal by A Rabid Global Press Machine.

The Genesis of the Show Occured A Few Years After Their First Meeting, WHEN LEWINSKY HAPPENED ON An Interview in The New York Times in WHICH Knox of About Her Desire to Tell Her Story Onscreen. Lewinsky Took The Idea of A Show to 20th Television, WHERE SHE HAS A FIRST-Look Deal. “They Jumped at It,” Lewinsky Says. After Meeting with Several Contenders, The Duo Brough on Kj Steinberg As Creator and Showrunner. “She Blew Everyone Else at the Water,” Lewinsky Says. Powerhouse Producer Warren Littlefield (Fargo, The Handsmaid’s Tale, Dopesick) Signated on to the Project Soon After Meeting with Them. “IT WASNTHING SOMETING SLAPPED THEIR NAMES ON,“ LITTLEFIELD SAYS. “I was Blown Away by the SinCerity and Determination. They have a story to Tell and they were committed to it. Grace Van Patten Stars As Knox in the Series, Which Was Shot in Rome, Vancouver and Budapest.

Our Conversation Took Place Earlier this month at a cramped Hollywood Photo Studio. In their First Interview Together, Knox and Lewinsky Talked About Ending the SpotLight, Rewriting Their Own Stories, Working on The Show and Taking Back Control.

At a very young age, you botth wnthough the kind of media firestorm that would be unimaginable to most people. You’re members of an exceedingly small club. DID THAT MAKE IT EASIER TO OPEN UP to Each Other?

Knox Of Course! Living Through This Kind of Experience Leaves this Lifelong Mark on You That Nobody Can Really Understand. There’s A Great Desire to Connect with People, But After Being Burned and Taken Advantage of For SO Long, You Live With this Constant Terror that People Wilt. WHEN I MET MONICA, I WAS JUST GLIMPSING WHAT IT COURCE MEAN TO STAND UP FOR MYSELF – AND HOPE Strangers Wuld Actual See Me As A Human Being. SO Talking to Her Was A Huge Relief. No One Had Walked that Walk Before Me More Than She Did.

Lewinsky 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’Tepen See People Reclaiming a Narrative in Public. There wasn’t a road map for us. Our situations were figrent, but with all the betrayal and experienced, i’ve felt lucky that i still trust people; I’M Still Optimistic About the World and People – Maybe that’s Naive of Me, But It Helps.

Knox The Truth is, I would never have done this without monica. She told me she would have my back, and she did. She Made Me Feel Safe. From the Start, we bot felt strngly that this series would not be just a courtroom Drama Drama that Ends WHEN AMANDA KNOX GETS OUT OF PRINON. It’s Anchored in the Long ConsequenCes of the Trauma and How A Person Rebuilds Their Life – and Their Faith in Humanity – by Taking Risks. There is life after trauma. There is growth. There is opportunity. MOVING FORWARD TAKES COURAGE, Compassation, Curiosity. IT’s A Story Worth Telling.

Lewinsky It was Really Important to Us to Go Beyond the Courtroom. It would have been so easy – and trite – to just say, “Here’s Six Episodes, We’re Going to End with The Acquittal.” There was a Lot of Resistance, But We Inserted On Eight Because The Story Doesn’s. Everyone Else Moves on But Ten You Have to Spend Years Trying To Reorient Yourself and Make Sense of Your Life. I HOPE THAT PEOPLE AWAY FROM This is Seeing Whata HapPens to People When the Headlines Quiet Down, Who You’re With Your Family, Trying To Find A Way F. I Not Just a True-Crime Show or A Courtronic Drama. I a look at the media and the rush to judgment you of the following see in cases like this. People Forget are human beings behind all this. With that of that understanding, maybe it won’t happen – or happen as badly – to the Next person.

Monica, You’d Worng the Subject-an-producer hats before, who you worked with ryan murphy On Impeachment: American Crime Story. IT MUST BE DIFFICULT TO See The Worst Moments of Your Life Turned Into Drama. How did you Guide Amanda Through That Process?

Lewinsky Wearing Both Hats is Challenging. But Coming Into ImpeachmentI Knew No One Wanted a Hagiography. Everyone Wanted A compelling Story that Revealed The Things People Thought they Knew – Untilhe Saw Something Different. And Amanda Got That, Too.

Knox There are scenes in there’s that i find kind of imbarrassing. (Laughs.) But You Know, I Was Young! That’s how it was. Going in, I was afraid i’d have to push backstantly against scandalizing or sensationalism. But KJ Understood – Bringing Her On Was The Best Decision We Made As Eps. She Understood that as Human Beings, We Are Doing Our Best in the World, That We’re Bumping Into Each Other and There’s SomeTimes A Perfect Storm Injustices. That gave me peace of mind – to trust the person at the helm to do what’s right and ethical – so the Creative Part Became Easier. She Even Invited Me to Co-Write the Final Episode. No One in My Position Is Ever Given That Kind of Respect and Opportunity.

Was The Interrogation Sequence the One You Were Most Confeerned About?

Knox YES. 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 Acknowledge The Depth of That Trauma. The Dynamics Aren’t As Clear Cut As We Se Seie On TV Shows, This Cartoonish Interaction. IT’s Way more complicated and nuanced. Multiple People in the Room, Some Yeling, Some Hitting Me, Other Comforting and Coaxing. I was vary young, imotionally vulnerable, and didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t just coerced into implicating myself – I was coerced into Believing I Might Have Witnessed a CRIME. That subtle psychologic shift is deeply traumatic, Very Real, and Hard for People to Understand. Watching Grace Go Through That Psychological Journey – Never Missing A Beat – That Was Shocking. I Cried at the end.

You Were Interrogated, Too, Monica, Durying The Clinton Impeachment.

Lewinsky Exactly. We Were Joking The Other Day, My Interrogation Was 13 Hours and Hers Was Like 50 Hours, So She Won. ALSO, MINE WAS AT RITZ Carlton, SO… (Laughs.) EVEN BEFORE I KNEW HER I HAD SO MUCH COMPASSION FOR AMANDA, BUT AFTER WE MET, I REALized How Little I Knew About Her, How Much and Had Gotten Wrong. This is Embarrassing, But I Thought That Amanda and Miredith Had Been RoomMates for Years and that Amanda and Her Boyfriend Had Been Together for A Long Time, Not Just A Week. I Thought that you guys had a found meredith’s body and you’d accountly touched the Knife. I HAD NO IDEA. I Think So Many people have no idea that meredith’s killer was caught and put in prison. They Certainly Don’t Know His Name. And that is a reality Important part of this story – We Needed to Set the Record Straight.

You’ve Both Pointed Out Thatre’s A Lot of Pruient Fascination and Judgment About Women in the Media, Especialy About Young Women – How Quick We Are To To Label and Howl.

Knox It Goes Back to How The Human Mind Works – How We Project Fears and Fantasies. It’s Easy to Project Things Onto Women Because We’re Objects of Other People’s Fantasies. And it’s not just men. PLENTY OF WOMEN WERE INVESTED IN MY PERECUCTION TOO. WHERE DOES THAT IMPULSE TO CONDEMN AND DIMINISH COME FROM? Women Always Getted Against Each Other – VirtoUS Versus Vice. We are meant to repressent Ideals of Instaad of Being Allowed to Be Flawed, Fragile Human Beings. We’re not given the grace to be complicated.

Lewinsky The Misogyny Also Becomes Internalized – Not Just for the Target But For All Women Consuming This Media. It Permetes How We Think and Feel About Ourselves. I HOPE IS Getting Better, But That’s Wy SHOWING The “AfterWARDS” MATTERS: Once You’ve Been Labeled and Buried, How Do You Emerge As Someone More Complex, With More. To stand up for yorself tails… Well, not Balls. (Laughs.) Something Else.

I Remember WHEN I FIRST MET MONICA, Back in The ’90s, We Couldn’T Enter a Room Without every Single Person Turning AROUND TO STARE AT HER. IT WAS A SMALL, SURREAL TASTE OF WHAT THAT Kind of Notoriety Feels Like. Amanda, What was the aftermath like for you?

Knox I Know That Surreal Feeling Really Well. There’s no Such Thing as Anonymity. But The Last Thing I Wanted After Getting Out of A Prison Cell Was to Be Cooped Up in a House Where I Couldn’t Even Look Out the Windows – Reintroduced To The World With A NEW PRISON. In Prison, I Pushed Back: “I’M Not the Monster they Say I am; I DON’T DESERVE TO BE HERE; I WON’T’T Be Broken.” ONCE YOU ARE FREE, YOU THINK YOU’LL Get YOUR LIFE BACK, But YOU DON’T’T. You have to slavely rediscover who you are – It Takes a Lot of Trial and Error – Hoping People Will Embrace You, Because We’re Notands. Early On, I Made Some Big Mistakes, Hiding Alone in My Apartment, THEN T Rying to go – Karaoke! – Just Trying to Live My Life and Connect. And for a long time, Things Were Thrown Back in My Face, The Fact That I Was Alive and Free Was Somehow Offensive to Some People. I wasn’t allowed to exist outtside the box the World Put me in.

Lewinsky I Still Struggle – Almost 28 Years on – with the construct that my mistakes are expensive. Even Prepping to Talk About this Show Today, I Panicked. WHAT IF I MESS UP AND I Lose Everything? That’s Very Real. MOST PEOPLE A BEFORE AND AFTER. What’s Hard About The after is Being Publicly DEFINED by the Media, and the Ten Trying to Find a Way Forward in a Land that Doesn’t Necessarily Want to See You Do It.

The Indignities of Fame – The Strange Rules You Learn to Live by …

Lewinsky In New York, if A Restaurant Sent You Free Dessert, You Learned to Get Out Fast – It Meant they Called the Paparazzi. If page six is reporting what you at, the Tip Came from the restaurant. There’s A Recognizable Look You See On Celebrities Who’re Photographed From A Distance – The “Is That A Camera?” Face. I One thing if you’ve sounghht out of that celebrity. But WHEN YOU HAVEN’T CHOSEN PUBLIC LIFE, YOU DON’T HAVE INFRASTCTURE. You TRY TO LEARN WHEN The GOONS Are Coming Out – We Call Them Goons in My Family. But you don’know even how to plan – you get Coffee in the Morning in New York and There’s A Gagle of Goons Waiting Outside for You with Cameras— And’s Just Exausting. But Even People Watching the Show Who Wren in A Presidential Scandal or Wrongfully Convicted Will Recognize the Emotions.

Knox You live with paranoia, but it’s justified paranoia. Not that Someone Confronts You Every Day, But It Could Happen AnyWhere. Someone Might Be Stalking You; Someone Might Say Something Nice to Your Face And Ten Run Out and Tell [the tabloids]. You Always Are Gauging What People Want from You.

I Know That Both of You Relified On Your Families As A Lifeline.

Knox From the Second I Remember Existing, My Family Conveyed that I Matter, that i’m loved. EVEN WHEN THE WORLD DECONSTRUCTED ME – PAST, Present, Future – and Told Me I Don’t Matter, Deep Down I Knew They Were Wrong. That love prepared me to endure and not be broken.

Lewinsky OUR FAMILIES STOD by US. I don’t know if i could have survived this without mine.

Knox And that’s not someting to take for granted. A Lot of People Go Through Rough Experiences and Their Families Don’t. I Met Many of Them in Prison.

And your families are not immune from all the attraction. Monica, Didn’t Your Family Get Recognized While they Were on Some African SafarI?

Lewinsky IT WAS ACTUALLY ONE OF MY RELATIVES WHO IS AND Anthropologist, and He Was Out in the Field in Remote Africa Studying A Tribe Spoke An Obscure Language, I Don’T. They Didn’t Speak a Word of English. But Somehow they Knew “Monica Lewinsky!” (Laughs.)

I Remember You Once Telling me that what you lived at the watergate, you spent eight months without every leaving the House. Even the Balconies Were Off-Limits for You.

Lewinsky My Mom and I Lived in the Watergate. The Buildings Face Each Other, Plus The Hotel. A Lawyer Warned There Might Be People Renting Offices Across The Way with Microwave Mics or Long-Range Cameras. AT NIGHT, WE’D Crawl Out On the Balcony Just to Get Fresh Air. That was the extra of it for a long, Long While. My Mom Wuld Say, “You’ll See – You’ll Be ABLE TO GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT A HAT; YOU’LL SIT SIT AT A Restaurant.” I HATED IT – AND DRANK IT UP. I Need the Hope. Now She Likes to Say, “See? I Was Right.”

AMANDA, DID BECOMING A MOTHER CHANGE The Way You Thought About Your Story?

Knox As soon as i figured out that i was pregnant, i sudenly became Really scared. I Felt a Deep, Visceral Dread That Dark Cloud Hanging Over My Life – Unresolved – Wound Pass to My Daughter Just by Being Next to Me. I’d Seen It With My Husband – Headlines, People Photoshopping Knives Into His Facebook Photos. After the News of My Daughter Came Out, People Messgged Me Wishing Her To Die, To Be Murdated SO I Wuld “Understand.” I Need to Figure Out: Am and Just a victim of this Story, or do i have a say? If i do, what does that look like? I Wanted to Tell A Story That Wasn’t Just the Horrible Thing that Happy to Me, But What I DID ABOUT IT – TO DEFINE MYSELF ON MY OWN TERMS.

You’re Both undesandably Wary of Media But Now You Also Are The Media. You Host Podcasts and Write Columns for Magazines. Is that complicted for you?

Lewinsky It is complicated. The Media Can Be Awful. But You Learn to Adjust. Things slawly Started to Open Up for Me, And I Had to Leave that Behind. One Way Was Talking to Journalists Who Hadn’t Covered ’98. And I Overprepare for Everything, Including This Interview. IT HELPS MY PTSD.

Knox Media isn’t Bad by Definition; IT’s A Tool That Can Be Used For Good or Evil. Having Been on the Wrong Side, You Appreciate the Power of Sharing Information – and the Responsibility to Make It More Ethical, Fair, Compassionate, More Uplifting of Humans.

Lewinsky One Guiding Principle Amanda Broughha Was That Everybody in The Show Show Be Dimensionalized. That became a principle for kj and the writers, and for Directors and costume people and set people. I HOPE WHEN PEOPLE Watch, They Feel That Dimensionality.

How did you Two Come Together to Make this Show?

Lewinsky I read a fantastic New York Times Interview Where Amanda Talked About Wanting to Take Her Memoir, Wavy to be heardand do a film of it. I HAD A FIRST-FOLOK AT 20th Television. I Quickly Went to My Executive – Taylor Morgan – and Luckily She Was Savvy Enough to Get The Yeses Very Quickly. I Reaned Out to Amanda, Brough Everyone Together for Breakfast, and THEN AS EPS We Set Out to Meet ShowRunners.

You interviews a whole bunch of Showrunners Before You Landed on KJ Steinberg. What Clicked?

Knox KISMET. She Really Understood the Information Begind the Series from the Beginning. She Had this crazy story about being in a therapy session and communing a photo of me in a collaage she have made years ago – it was that picture of me behind the barson bras. Sheemed it to me any we met: “Is that you?” YES. That’s me. A Lot of Things Came Together. But Monica and I Knew She Was The One.

WHAT WAS The WRITING PROCESS LIKE FOR THE SHOW?

Lewinsky IT WAS RESEARCHED AND Written in Three Years. Amanda Was A Main Resource, But It Was Like A Huge Research Project. KJ and the PRODUCERS – Warren Littlefield and Lisa Harrison and Ann Johnson – Just Devoted Their Lives to This Thing. It was this consuming passion for them. We Spent Three Years Poring Through Transcripts and Newspaper Accounts and Legal Documents, Literally, Tens of Thoousands Of Pages. It was vital to get all the Facts Right. KJ Ran An Incredible Room; The Writers Brough Their Own Experiences that Resonated with Amanda’s Story. We Wanted to Make Something Resonant and Meaningful – Not Something Easy and Trite.

Knox In the room, i talaked through arcs. One Thing I Wanted to Confey Was The Love-Lost Story Between Me and Raffaele-We’d Met and Were Just Eight Days Into Young Love Before Were Were Arrested. THEN THERE’S SURVIAL AND GRIEF. We Wanted to Bring Authentic Knowledge to the Table, Thatn Whittle and Sculpt It Into A Show. I was interroged for 53 hours over five days – we can’t show that – so how do you:

Lewinsky This Idea of Emotion Truth – I Got Such An Incredible Education from Ryan About That While Making Impeachment. HE Wuld Always Say, “I DON’T SO MUCH NEED The DETAILS – IT’S MORE HELPFUL to KNOW HOW IT Feels.”

The Show’s Spine – As You’ve Both Said – Is The “Anatomy of Bias.”

Lewinsky Exactly. IT’S NOT “Who did it?” IT’s “How did this happen?” How Did A 20-YEAR-ELD AMERICAN KID IN A Foreign Country, Without Language, End Up Wrongfully Convicted and Spending Four Years in Prison? I HAD Compassion for Amanda – and Realized How Wrong i’d Been. Many people don’t know the Facts they think they know. That’s the Sociology and Psychology We’re Unpacing – in an Enterning Way.

Casting Amanda is a big swing. WHY GRACE VAN PATTEN?

Knox I’d seen Tell Me Lies And Knew She Had the Range to Be 20-YEAR-ELD ME, GO THRUGH The Worst Experiences of My Life, and Also Portray 35-YEAR-ELD ME. Early On, She Asked Very Precise, Interesting Character Questions. And She Hit the Gund Running. She Even Got My Snort.

Lewinsky The Laugh. YES, The Snort.

Knox Her Attraction to Detail, Her Ability to Turn on And Ten Turn It Off, She Just Has This Innate Talent.

Lewinsky The Subject-Active Relationship is Special-They Become a Proxy for You. People Think They Know A Story, Untilhe Watch A Performance Like Grace’s. IT LETS TheM STEP OUTSIDE WHAT they KNEW AND SEE Iting A NEW LENS.

I’m assuming you’ve broth have a flood of offers over the years from Hollywood.

Knox MOST AREN’T OFFERS; people just do whaty’re going to do with your consent. But, yes, there are offers – and I Turn Penty Down.

Lewinsky If i’d taken all the offers over the years, i’d be very wealthy. There hoorphic on. But There’s A Lot of Integrity in the World, Too. People in the Watergate Who Worked For Very Little Turned Down A Lot of Money [to spy on me]. There’s A Lot of Good – Even with the Darkness.

Amanda, you host True-Crime PodCasts; Monica, You Produced 15 minutes of shame. WHY DOES TRUE CRIME DRAW SUCH A LARGE FEMALE AUDIENCE?

Knox AT ITS BEST, TRUE CRIME OFFERS A HUMAN PUZZLE – A DILEMMA YOU WANT TO SOLVE. But this show will draw people who into into True Crime as Well as People Who Are Are Averse to It. We Push Back Against The Untethical Parts of It: Scandalmonging, Black-and-Wehite Narratives, Turning People Into Caricatures for a Mral Argument. The Best True Crime Is When People Genuinely Care about the Worst Experiences of Other People’s Lives and Want to Do Right by them – to Understand How Human Perfect Anneg, HAPPEN HAPPEN, HAPPEN.

Lewinsky One That Was Important To Everybody in this Show is Respecting and Trying to Honor Meredith’s Memory in this. We Tried to Carry Her Memory with A Lot of Care.

That must have been complicated, given that her parents are not conferenced of amanda’s innocence.

Knox Her Parents Are Passed, But She have Three Siblings. Whaty’ve conveyed is a distancing from me, but that’s understandable, Considering the Myriad Lies they torta about me. HONESTLY, IS VERY COMMON IN Wrongful CONVICATION CASES. But She Was A Young 21-YEAR-ELD GIRL WHO W Ent to Italy to have the best experience of her life. And she didn’t get to go home. We Were Both Just Young Girls Who Were Trying to Live Our Best Lives. So, we are trying to Honor that.

Last Question, for Amanda – WHEN AUDIENCES FINISH THE SERIES, WHAT DO YOU HOPE LINGERS?

Knox I Think The Ultimate Message That Our Show Conveys is that You Can Survive, and Literally Can Become A Person That Is Not Limited by the Box that Society put you in. You can stand up on that box and Tell Your Own Story, Be A Bigger Person Than Society Wanted You to Be.

This story appears in the aug. 20 Issue of the Hollywood Reporter Magazine. Click Here to Subscribe.