The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox & More Shows Based on True Crime Cases
Back when Amanda Knox was locked up in an Italian prison, wrongfully convicted of the murder of her study abroad roommate Meredith Kercher, just about everyone had an opinion on her case.
Now, the exoneree is telling her story, serving as an executive producer on Hulu's new dramatic series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox starring Grace Van Patten.
"The show gives everyone the opportunity to understand it more and to form an opinion based on facts, and not what they were being fed at the time,” the actress recently told The New York Times. "She was just a 20-year-old girl going through this."
It was 18 years ago that Knox—then a college student studying abroad in Perugia, Italy—and Raffaele Sollecito, the guy she'd recently begun dating, were accused of murdering Kercher. Their legal battle made headlines for years as the pair were convicted of murder in 2009, had their convictions overturned in 2011, were re-convicted in 2014 and ultimately exonerated again in 2015.
However, Knox says the Hulu show goes beyond the final verdict.
"This series is not just a courtroom drama that ends when Amanda Knox gets out of prison," the 38-year-old explained to The Hollywood Reporter in an Aug. 18 video. "That’s typically how you see these stories told. This story is really anchored in the long consequences of the trauma that happened in the courtroom and how a person rebuilds their life and rebuilds their faith in humanity by taking risks. There’s a story of me, Amanda, taking a big risk to have faith and trust in people again and the benefits of that and the costs of that."
Teaming up with Monica Lewinsky—another public figure quite familiar with being at the center of a media storm—Knox was eager to share that piece of her journey.
"That’s why it’s so important to show the afterwards," she added. "Once you’ve been labeled and diminished and buried as a human being, how do you emerge as a person who is more complex and has more value than what society gave you credit for?"The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox premieres on Hulu Aug. 20. However, it’s hardly the first true crime case to inspire a based-on-real-events story. Check out the other IRL dramas that became must-see TV.
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is a drama about Amanda Knox's legal case, the media frenzy surrounding it and her journey to rebuild her life.
"I’ve spent years feeling like I was silenced," the exoneree and executive producer told The Hollywood Reporter in August 2025. "It’s a relief to finally be heard."
In 2007, Knox—then a 20-year-old studying abroad in Italy—and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher.
They were convicted of murder in 2009, their convictions were overturned in 2011, they were re-convicted in 2014 and then their convictions were ultimately overturned again in 2015.Rudy Guede was convicted of Kercher’s murder in a separate trial in 2008 and released from prison in 2021.
Knox—who was convicted of slander for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of Kercher's murder—is played by Grace Van Patten in the show.
Twenty-one years after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, Ryan Murphy released the first season of American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.
The Emmy-winning series featured a star-studded cast, including Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson, Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown as prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, and John Travolta, David Schwimmer and Courtney B. Vance as the defense's Robert Shapiro, Robert Kardashian and Johnnie Cochran.
Simpson was found liable for Brown and Goldman's deaths in a 1997 civil trial. He also spent nine years in prison after he was accused of robbing sports memorabilia dealers in 2007 and convicted of armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges the following year.Simpson died in 2024 after a battle with cancer.
For the second season of American Crime Story, the FX series focused on the 1997 murder of designer Gianni Versace.
Darren Criss won an Emmy for his portrayal of serial killer Andrew Cunanan and has spoken about how he tapped into the character.
"As an actor, I’m in the business of empathy—that’s my livelihood," the Glee star said in a 2018 interview with Larry King. "Obviously, these acts were deplorable and unforgiveable. But when you look deeper and you’re trying to find the common denominators between yourself and another person, you’re going to find more in common than not."
In addition to Criss, Édgar Ramírez starred as Gianni, Penélope Cruz portrayed his sister Donatella Versace and Ricky Martin played Gianni's partner Antonio D'Amico.
Amanda Seyfried took on the role of Elizabeth Holmes for The Dropout.Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 after she was found guilty of defrauding investors in her blood testing company Theranos out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
And while Seyfried won an Emmy for her performance, Holmes has insisted that Hollywood portrayals of her don’t reflect who she really is.
"They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created,” she told The New York Times in 2023, going on to explain why she crafted an alter ego. "I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas. Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t."
HBO’s drama The Staircase is based on the case of Michael Peterson.
Peterson was accused of killing his wife Kathleen Peterson after she was found dead at the foot of the staircase in their North Carolina home in 2001. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder two years later, and he was sentenced to life without parole. However, a judge granted Peterson a new trial in 2011 after the defense claimed former State Bureau of Investigation agent Duane Deaver fabricated evidence with his bloodstain pattern analysis. In 2017, Peterson entered an Alford plea—where the defendant pleads guilty while still maintaining their innocence—of voluntary manslaughter. Having already served time in prison, he walked free.
Colin Firth played Peterson in the 2022 miniseries, which also featured Toni Collette as Kathleen, Sophie Turner as daughter Margaret and Patrick Schwarzenegger as son Todd.
Anna Delvey, a.k.a. Anna Sorokin, was the main subject of the Netflix drama Inventing Anna starring Julia Garner.
Delvey was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison in 2019 after being found guilty of theft services, grand larceny and attempted grand larceny. The fake heiress was released from prison in 2021 and then taken into custody by ICE. She was released in 2022 but was ordered to finish her sentence under house arrest.
Garner received an Emmy nomination for her performance and delivered on Delvey's now-famous accent."It’s really hard to tell where she would be from," Delvey, who moved from her native Russia to Germany as a teen, told The New York Times in 2022 of her take on Garner's manner of speaking. "She got it right in a way."
In the Hulu series The Act, Joey King played Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for acting with then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to kill her mother Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard. Blanchard testified her mom abused her and made her believe she had medical conditions she did not actually have—with Blanchard's attorneys arguing her mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
As for her reaction to The Act, the Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up star was impressed with King's Emmy-nominated performance. Although, she was more critical of Patricia Arquette's portrayal of her mother.
“I think Joey King did an amazing job playing me,” Blanchard told Us Weekly in May 2024, five months after her prison release. "I was a little bit harder on Patricia Arquette playing my mom just because it’s my life. I am very hypercritical of it."
Evan Peters wasn't sure he wanted to play Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who murdered 17 young men between 1978 and 1991.
Taking on the role in 2022's Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, "Honestly, I was very scared about all the things that he did and diving into that, and trying to commit to that was absolutely going to be one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life," the actor told Netflix's Tudum. "Because I wanted it to be very authentic. But in order to do that, I was going to have to go to really dark places and stay there for an extended period of time."
Peters took home a Golden Globe for his performance, and Niecy Nash won an Emmy for her portrayal of Glenda Cleveland, the neighbor who called the police multiple times on Dahmer.
In Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch played the titular brothers who were convicted of murdering their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez (played by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny).The 1996 convictions came after a mistrial, where the defense argued the 1989 killings were done in self-defense after the brothers suffered years of abuse from their father while the prosecution said the siblings murdered their parents for financial gain. A judge excluded testimony relating to the abuse allegations in the second trial. While the brothers were sentenced to life in prison without parole, a judge resentenced them in 2025 to 50 years to life—making them eligible for parole.
Though Erik criticized the show, Lyle later told TMZ's 2 Angry Men podcast, it did "move a lot of people to understand the childhood trauma that Erik and I suffered."
eonline
