‘The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox’ Stars Grace Van Patten and Sharon Horgan on Playing Living People: ‘I Was Anxious They’d Be Upset by the Scenes’

Grace Van Patten and Sharon Horgan opened up about their emotionally charged mother-and-daughter-roles in Hulu’s documentary series, “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” during a discussion moderated by Vanity Fair reporter Rebecca Ford.​

“The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox” revisits the 2007 case where Amanda Knox was wrongfully convicted of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. The series retells the story from Knox’s perspective as she experiences the injustice in her twenties to present day. The eight-episode drama was created by K.J. Steinberg, executive produced by Monica Lewinsky and co-produced by Knox. 

Van Patten recalled how her fascination with portraying Knox stemmed from learning about her case in the 2016 Netflix documentary, “Amanda Knox.”​

“After I first watched it, I called my agents right away,” she said. “When I started acting, I asked about any projects on Amanda Knox because I would love to play her. When this came around, it felt like something I wanted to do, and I didn’t even know too much about it. I just saw her and this young girl in this situation and could not believe that her story had not been told with her involved.” ​

Eight years later, Van Patten got the chance in 2024 to play the lead role. Margaret Qualley, first cast as Knox, left the project due to scheduling conflicts. Before the role was officially recast, Van Patten suspected that she was being considered after Knox followed her on Instagram. 

“My sister helps run my Instagram, and she sent me a screenshot,” she explained. “My heart dropped and I texted everyone, ‘What does this mean?’ They told me that they were thinking of me. I met with the showrunner K.J. [Steinberg] and Warren Littlefield, and they walked me through their vision for it. I was so inspired by how they were planning to tell her story.”

Horgan, who plays Knox’s mother Edda Mella, explained the difficulty in grounding herself in the role since she had very little information about Mella’s perspective.

“There’s not a lot of stuff online with Edda [Mellas] talking, but I found some videos of her doing early press conferences,” Horgan said. “I thought about how someone with a normal and different background was able to handle that with dignity and bravery. The rest of it was how I related to her as a mother. That was what I tapped into.”

Van Patten’s biggest challenge was her desire to do Knox’s story justice by ensuring she was “telling her story the right way.” While nerve-racking at first, the actor found comfort in Knox’s presence whenever she appeared on set.

“Having her there was a weird safety,” she said. “ I knew that we were going to get it right because she was there and I felt her support. It made me emotional and motivated to do it as authentically as possible.”

Horgan shared similar sentiments, acknowledging the pressure of shooting scenes knowing Knox was reliving the most traumatic moments of her life.

“You want to tell her story the right way,” Horgan said. “These moments that are for them must have been so hard to watch. I still feel very close to them. I was anxious that they would be upset by the scenes.”

Between learning Italian two months prior to shooting and portraying Knox through different decades, Van Patten stretched herself in ways that she hadn’t done before. But she was honored to take part in telling Knox’s story through her eyes.

“The process of trying to make all of those versions feel a little bit different, but still maintain what Amanda still has to this day, which is an amount of positivity that I couldn’t imagine having gone through, is so inspiring to me,” she said.