Margaret Qualley to play Amanda Knox in new drama series

Margaret Qualley is set to play Amanda Knox in a new eight-episode Hulu series.

Qualley, 29, is fresh from appearing in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar-nominated Poor Things and Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls.

Knox was 22 when she was wrongfully convicted of the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher while studying abroad in Italy.

Hulu has described the as-yet-untitled series as following both the trial and conviction and “her 16-year odyssey to set herself free”.

Knox was wrongfully imprisoned for four years before Rudy Guede was convicted of killing the British student.

The series has been created and will be overseen by showrunner KJ Steinberg, a producer and writer whose previous credits include This Is Us and Gossip Girl.

Knox herself is one of the executive producers for the series, as is Monica Lewinsky.

In 2021, Knox criticised Matt Damon and director Tom McCarthy for exploiting her story in their film Stillwater, which she claimed saw them “profit” from her wrongful murder conviction.

Damon starred in the movie as a father who travels to France to help exonerate his daughter, who is in prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit. The story was partially inspired by what was described by press as “the Amanda Knox saga”.

Knox condemned the film in a lengthy Twitter thread.

Speaking to Variety, she added: “Matt Damon and the director can walk away with a great story in their pocket, but meanwhile, I’m still living with the consequences of people thinking that I am somehow involved in this crime that I am not involved in.

“I’m very open about how I’ve continually felt exploited by people who are not allowing me to be a voice in my own narrative. And because I have been so vocal about that, I find it to be a kind of gross negligence of these filmmakers to not take note of that in their own development of this project, and in their promotion of this project, constantly bringing me into the equation as this idea of me, as opposed to as the real person.”

Knox wrote a piece for The Independent in 2021 about how she plans to tell her daughter her life story.

“I wonder how I will explain it all: Italy, tragedy, prison, injustice,” she wrote. “I wonder how my own mother felt, looking at me when I had this same innocent face, the kind of innocence you don’t have to fight tooth and nail to prove.”