Nearly two decades after one of the most sensational murder cases in modern European history gripped global headlines, a new controversy has erupted around American exonerated suspect Amanda Knox, ahead of the debut of her one-woman comedy show at the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe.
In 2007, 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher was found stabbed to death in the Perugia, Italy, apartment she shared with Knox, then a 20-year-old American exchange student, and two other Italian roommates. Knox and her then-new boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were arrested and tried for the murder, with Knox serving almost four years in Italian prison before an appeals court ordered her release in 2011. Italy’s highest court ultimately issued a full acquittal for both Knox and Sollecito in 2015, after Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede—whose DNA was recovered at the crime scene—was convicted of Kercher’s murder. Guede was released from prison in 2021 after completing the majority of his 16-year sentence.
Following her return to the United States in 2011, the now 39-year-old Knox has built a career as an advocate for wrongfully convicted people, hosting a podcast with her husband and releasing a memoir *Free: My Search for Meaning* in 2023. Her new show, titled *Cartwheel*, is set to premiere Friday at the Edinburgh Fringe, running for 11 consecutive nights through the festival’s August run. The title references a long-circulated, unsubstantiated rumor that Knox did cartwheels at a local police station in the days after Kercher’s killing. Promotional materials frame the performance as a middle-aged mother’s reflection on processing decades of public scrutiny and anger over her wrongful imprisonment, at a time when half the public still believes she is guilty and the other half demands she “move on.”
The show has drawn fierce criticism from Stephanie Kercher, the sister of the murder victim, who told the BBC she believes the production trivializes and normalizes violence against women, and should be pulled from the festival lineup. While Stephanie acknowledged Knox has every right to rebuild her life after acquittal, she argued that turning the high-profile tragedy into a comedy act is unacceptable, adding that the project opens fresh wounds for her family. She called for the festival to deny the show a public platform, a position echoed by an online petition demanding the performance’s cancellation that has gathered more than 4,400 signatures as of Thursday. The petition claims the show mocks the brutal circumstances of Kercher’s killing to turn a personal tragedy into commercial entertainment.
Knox has pushed back forcefully against the criticism in an Instagram post shared Thursday, rejecting the claims against her show and defending its place at the Edinburgh Fringe. She argued that *Cartwheel* honors Kercher’s legacy and explicitly condemns the violence that claimed Kercher’s life and upended her own life wrongfully. The American activist also dismissed the cancellation petition, noting that signatories are calling for the removal of a production none have yet seen, based on false accusations designed to shame her into silence. She added that the Edinburgh Fringe, famous for hosting provocative, personal work across all performance genres, is the ideal space for a show that addresses such sensitive, personal topics.