Amanda Knox is defending Cartwheel, a comedy show scheduled to appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. According to Knox, the production is about motherhood, raising a daughter in a world where women face injustice and violence, and the difficult choice of whether to tell a child the full truth about such dangers. The title refers to claims that, after the death of her roommate Meredith Kercher, Knox allegedly performed a “cartwheel” at a police station.
The Fringe is considered a venue for controversial and experimental work because of its open participation model: as long as productions meet organizational requirements, they generally do not undergo strict artistic selection. The festival’s independent venues allow politically charged and provocative projects to be presented, although that does not rule out protests, boycotts or the cancellation of individual performances because of security threats or violations of the law or venue rules.
After the show was announced, an online petition calling for it to be removed from the festival gathered more than 33,000 signatures. Its authors argue that the production mocks the circumstances of Kercher’s murder and turns the tragedy into entertainment. The victim’s sister, Stephanie Kercher, also spoke out against the show, emphasizing that the issue is not whether Knox is guilty or innocent, but that Meredith’s story is being used in a comedic format and given a public platform.
Knox rejected the criticism, saying on social media that calls to cancel the show were based on false accusations and an attempt to silence a “slandered woman.” She called the Edinburgh Fringe an appropriate place for such a production and said that Cartwheel preserves Kercher’s memory while drawing attention to the violence suffered by both the murdered woman and Knox herself.
Knox, a Seattle native, was a 20-year-old exchange student in Perugia when she was accused of killing Kercher along with her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. After two convictions and subsequent appeals, Knox was finally acquitted of the murder in 2015. By then, she had spent about four years in an Italian prison.
After Knox returned to Seattle, she was often viewed as a local resident who had endured a difficult and, many believed, unjust legal ordeal in Italy. Local media covered her return extensively, while public support grew after her conviction was overturned in 2011 and her final acquittal in 2015. At the same time, attitudes toward Knox were not entirely uniform: some journalists and residents continued to question her account of events and criticized the sensationalized coverage of the case.
The charge that Knox had defamed Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba remained in place: she was sentenced to three years, which she had already served in detention, for falsely implicating him in the murder. Knox later appealed the decision, citing a finding by the European Court of Human Rights that her right to a lawyer and an interpreter had been violated during her initial interrogations. An Italian court again found her guilty on that count last year. Separately, Rudy Hermann Guede, whose DNA was found at the crime scene, was convicted of the murder and released in 2021 after serving most of his 16-year sentence.
Based on: Amanda Knox’s comedy show outrages murdered roommate’s family