Amanda Knox has vowed not to put a stop to her controversial Edinburgh Fringe show because she ‘can’t put my life on hold’.
The American has come under intense criticism for deciding to debut her one-woman comedy show at the popular festival this summer, with it already blasted as ‘offensive and deplorable’.
The 38-year-old’s show, which is to be presented by high profile Edinburgh Festival Fringe operator Gilded Balloon, is expected to contain jokes about her experiences of being accused of the 2007 murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.
Ms Knox, who was asked what her reaction would be to Ms Kercher’s family explicitly asked her not to do the show, said: ‘I would ask if they wanted to talk to me. I’d ask for that opportunity. But I can’t force that.
‘I also can’t put my life on hold waiting for permission to be a person who exists in the world, who has a legitimate story to tell.’
She made her comments in an interview with The Times newspaper, but they came before it was revealed that Francesco Maresca, the Kercher family lawyer, criticised her Fringe plans.
Describing the comedy show as an ‘offensive and deplorable’ insult to the victim’s memory, he said he had ‘lost all hope’ Ms Knox could ‘comprehend the feelings’ her actions have prompted among Ms Kercher’s family.
Amanda Knox was famously tried, convicted and later acquitted for the murder of the 21-year-old student Meredith Kercher
Ms Kercher (above) had been sharing a house in the university town of Perugia, around 100 miles north of Rome, when she was murdered
Ms Knox was famously tried, convicted and later acquitted for the murder of the 21-year-old student.
Both language exchange students sharing a house in the university town of Perugia, around 100 miles north of Rome, Ms Kercher was found dead.
Ms Kercher’s throat had been cut and she had been sexually assaulted.
Ms Knox’s show is named Cartwheel which is reference to the exercises she reportedly performed at a police station in the aftermath of the high-profile murder.
Speaking while on holiday in Scotland with her husband, four-year-old daughter, and her son aged two, she said: ‘I don’t like assuming the worst about people or places. I want to believe that at Edinburgh I could get a fair hearing.’
She added: ‘I feel wronged and I don’t like letting the people who wronged me win... I don’t want to let the bullies win.
‘I know I have something legitimate to say, I’m not just going up there for the heck of it.
‘It’s not just about me but it’s about what it means to be a woman in the world.’
And Ms Knox insisted the show did not make light of the horror of what happened to Kercher.
She said: ‘It is absolutely true that for anyone to have any understanding about what happened to me, you have to go back to a young woman named Meredith Kercher.
‘There is genuine ethical complexity and I think some serious people can raise it in good faith. Our stories are inextricably linked.
‘And, furthermore, Meredith’s family, who did nothing wrong and who lost everything, may be reactivated every time they hear my story.’
But she argued that the demand she be silent was unusual in context, and said: ‘I personally have never heard of anyone saying that the Guildford Four or the Central Park Five or literally any other wrongly convicted person should be silenced out of deference to the victims of the original crime.’