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Amanda Knox claims Meredith Kercher would have been amused by her new stand-up routine, in which she refers to what happened after the student's murder.
Knox, 39, was twice convicted and twice cleared of Kercher's murder in Perugia, Italy, in 2007, before finally being acquitted for good by Italy's Supreme Court in 2015.
Now a mother-of-two, Knox shares her memories of the case in her new one-woman show, titled Cartwheel, which she describes as her way of revealing to her children what happened to her.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Knox spoke of the process of preparing for her show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is being produced by her writer husband Christopher Robinson.
Knox said: "I don’t joke about Meredith’s death. I joke a lot about how I was vilified, but I don’t joke about her murder. That’s just a line for me. I set red lines for myself that other comedians don’t. I’ve had other comedians pitch me jokes that I just would not do.
British exchange student Meredith Kercher, 21, was murdered in Perugia, Italy, in 2007"Meredith was really sophisticated and smart, but she was also fun, she was also playful. We would put on music together, and we went out dancing. She liked to have a good time.
"I think that she would appreciate the show, because it grapples with what it means to be a young woman, and it's honest."
Asked if Meredith would have found the show funny, Knox says: "Yeah, I think so. I mean, it is funny!"
The US national already has experience as a warm-up act for comedians like Golden Globes host Nikki Glaser and says she initially planned a stand-up routine about motherhood, before friends told her she needed to "address the elephant in the room".
Then aged 20, Knox shared a flat with British exchange student Kercher, who attended Leeds University. The world’s media descended upon Perugia when Kercher was found dead in her bedroom in November 2007, after being sexually assaulted and stabbed to death.
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Amid intense media attention, Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of the murder in 2009 and jailed, only to be freed upon appeal in 2011.
A third defendant, a drifter named Rudy Guede from the Ivory Coast whose DNA was found at the scene, was separately convicted of the killing in 2008. He was released in 2021, after serving 13 years of a 16-year sentence, and is currently awaiting trial over a separate alleged sexual assault.
Despite Knox's assurances that she doesn't joke about the death, Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca blasted the show as "offensive and deplorable".
Maresca told the Scottish Sun on Sunday he had "lost all hope" that Knox could understand the family's feelings, adding that her behaviour had "always been over the top and extremely excessive".
He has previously accused Knox of producing books and TV shows which focused on Kercher's death rather than her life, a criticism which Knox has hit out as "unfair".
She in turn insists that Maresca has never "actually engaged with any of the material that I have made", adding that Meredith was "a real person who I have a real relationship with".
- Cartwheel by Amanda Knox plays at the Gilded Balloon Teviot (Wine Bar) from August 7 to 17, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Tickets: edfringe.com