At Edinburgh Fringe, Amanda Knox Takes the Mic to Reclaim Her Story

It was the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and Amanda Knox was pacing the stage of a shabby theater.

For about 15 minutes, she had been trying out her jokes in “Cartwheel,” her one-hour Fringe debut as a stand-up comic. In her act, Knox, 39, roamed the stage where toys and clothes were scattered, telling stories and occasionally dialoguing with the recorded voice of her daughter, Eureka, who is 5.

She was trying to find the humor in her own story, that of an American parent, but one who had been wrongly held in a prison in Italy for years for the 2007 murder of her roommate when both women were studying abroad there. But the sold-out audience, 150-strong, at first only occasionally tittered at her gags about life in prison, tabloid infamy and the idiosyncrasies of child-rearing.

Then, she told a joke about her daughter’s favorite game.

It’s called “Momma goes to Italy,” Knox said. In the game, her daughter grabs the bars of a jungle gym at their local playground and screams, “Let me out! Let me out!” Knox mimed a wild-eyed convict desperately grabbing the bars of a prison cell. The audience’s snickers turned into the night’s first belly laugh.

As surprising as it might be that Knox is trying stand-up, it’s arguably even riskier for her to debut such a show at the Fringe in Scotland, given her mixed reputation in Britain, the home country of the slain roommate, Meredith Kercher. Knox’s foray into comedy also raised questions about who has the right to tell a story onstage.

Knox said in an earlier video interview that she was trying comedy because she felt “pigeonholed as either a true crime or tragic figure” when in reality she had always been a “goofy, quirky theater girl.”

“Doing this show is me going back to my roots and trying to reclaim who I was before all the bad stuff happened,” Knox said.

The Edinburgh Fringe is a high-stakes platform for such a transformation. Held every August, the festival has a reputation as a brutal testing ground for new comics. Reviewers regularly savage stand-up shows, but for a lucky few acts — like Hannah Gadsby, James Acaster and Richard Gadd (of “Baby Reindeer”) — it can be a springboard to fame.

Many Fringe comics find humor in dark subjects, among them, Gadd, whose breakout show was about stalking, and the Australian comedian Frankie McNair, who is presenting an act this year called “Huge Ass Mindset” about overcoming child abuse.

Still, since “Cartwheel” was announced in May, the idea of Knox’s performing in Britain has raised eyebrows here. She was ultimately exonerated in the murder by Italy’s highest court in 2015, but many people here still feel that Knox must have had something to do with the killing. Others think she should stay out of the public eye to avoid further traumatizing Kercher’s family.

Last week, Stephanie Kercher, Meredith’s sister, gave media interviews urging the venue hosting Knox’s show to cancel “Cartwheel,” which runs through Aug. 17. Kercher said in an email that Knox was causing her family “deep pain,” adding that “a real-life case and victim should not be allowed as a comedy show in the U.K.”

An online petition against the performance secured over 40,000 signatures, and Britain’s tabloid press, which has demonized Knox for years, also weighed in. Immediately after her Friday debut, The Daily Mail published an article on its website with the headline “Is There Anything ‘Foxy Knoxy’ Won’t Do for Attention — or Money?”

In interviews after the show, some audience members also wondered if Knox’s motivation had been financial — although most Fringe shows don’t make a profit, even when, like Knox’s, they sell out. Edward Lipscombe, 72, who was in the audience at the Gilded Balloon, theorized that Knox either needed the money, or was looking a therapeutic space to talk about her experiences. But he added that it had been a well crafted hour and said Knox had revealed she had “more heart than you’d imagine.”

Even to some people who know her, Knox’s presence at the Fringe had at least initially been puzzling. Jena Friedman, an American stand-up who was a consultant on the show, said she had asked Knox repeatedly why she was doing it.

“Her level of bravery doing this is just beyond comprehension,” Friedman said.

Knox said in the interview that she had expected controversy, but added that she refused to let Britain’s tabloid press influence her choices. “There is a defiant streak in me that’s like, ‘You know what?’” she said. “‘I didn’t hurt anybody. I’m not at fault for what happened.’”

In the intervening years, she has written two memoirs, hosts a podcast with her husband, and is the subject of a Hulu series. Performing comedy is a recently developed p***ion, although her interest in the genre goes further back. She said she was a longtime fan of Weird Al Yankovic and enjoyed watching “Flight of the Conchords” in prison because Italian TV broadcast it late at night, undubbed.

She was switched on to the possibility of doing stand-up herself in 2023, she said, when she was invited to be a surprise guest in a comedy roast of her friend, the comedian Whitney Cummings. During that brief three-minute set, Knox joked that she had only been invited because other comedians “want to follow a performer who has never killed.”

That gave her the comedy bug, Knox said, and soon she was doing occasional slots at a local comedy night in Vashon Island, Wash., where she lives. She performed there — “in a wine pub that used to be someone’s backyard” — every few months, she said, and she mainly did “mom jokes” about, say, having a crush on a children’s cartoon character.

The idea of a show in Edinburgh came to her last year after she met the sketch comedy duo Britanick, who rhapsodized about the Fringe as a place where comedians could hone their craft. Nick Kocher, one of Britanick’s members, said that he had warned Knox that she would get savaged online, but she’d said it wasn’t a problem. “That’s already happening,” he recalled her saying.

While writing the show, Knox said, she sent drafts to comedians including Friedman and Lauren Weedman for advice. Among their recommendations, Knox said, was to “embrace just some of the straight, straight trauma.”

She certainly heeded their word near the show’s finale. Her act was called “Cartwheel,” she had said earlier, because Italian prosecutors said she had turned cartwheels in a police station shortly after Kercher’s death as evidence of inappropriate frivolity in the wake of the violent killing. (Knox said she had actually been doing yoga).

Growing serious as the end of the routine approached, Knox said she was raising her daughter “to be the exact girl I was punished for being.” When Eureka is old enough to hear her life story, Knox said, it would be told as a lesson to “live your life to the fullest and not be held back by anything.”

“But kids don’t really listen to you,” Knox said: “You have to show them” — that’s why she had come the Fringe, she said.

Knox then cartwheeled across the stage, and about half the audience rose in an ovation.