Amanda Knox has launched a sell-out stand-up comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe, drawing fierce criticism from the family of murdered British student Meredith Kercher. The 39-year-old American has billed her one-woman production, titled Cartwheel, as 70 per cent comedy and 30 per cent rage.
Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca called the production a deplorable offence to Meredith's memory. A Change.org petition started by family friend Sally Alington urging the venue to cancel the show has gathered more than 9,000 signatures.
Meredith Kercher was a 21-year-old exchange student from Coulsdon, Surrey, who was found half-clothed, raped, and murdered in November 2007 in the Perugia cottage she shared with Knox. Knox was twice convicted and twice acquitted of Kercher's murder before Italy's highest court cleared her in 2015.
Kercher's 43-year-old sister, Stephanie Kercher, appealed for Knox to cancel the week-long Fringe run, telling the Daily Mail that Knox appears unable to understand the continuing pain such public retellings inflict. Stephanie Kercher questioned why her family's feelings could not be considered after Knox enjoyed free speech to tell her story over the past decade with minimal comments from them.
Stephanie Kercher rejected Knox's promotional claim that Meredith would have found the show funny because she was fun, smart, and sophisticated. Stephanie Kercher responded that her sister would absolutely not find comedy surrounding these issues funny, adding she could not fathom how rape and murder can be laughed about.
Protests and petition against Cartwheel
The Change.org petition states that the show disrespects Kercher's memory and risks normalising violence by making light of a harrowing event. Sally Alington told the Daily Mail that staging the production in the United Kingdom feels like trolling the Kercher family, whose surviving members reside in the country.
Alington pointed out that Knox claimed to honour Kercher's memory without ever asking the family. Following news of the petition, Knox defended the show on Instagram, stating that the petition contained false assumptions, mischaracterised the show, and that Cartwheel honours Kercher while calling out the violence done to both of them.
Forensic evidence in the 2007 murder pointed to Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast-born drifter with a history of burglaries who fled Italy before being convicted. Guede served 13 years of a 16-year prison sentence for Kercher's murder.
Stage setup and performance details
Cartwheel takes place on a stage styled as a child's bedroom, filled with scattered toys, abandoned picture books, and an overflowing wicker laundry basket. Audio of Knox's four-year-old daughter drifting through speakers features the child asking about her Elsa dress, her brother biting her, and having spaghetti for dinner.
Knox replies to her daughter's dinner request by saying mama has post-traumatic spaghetti disorder, a line that prompts laughter from the audience. Knox explained that the title Cartwheel derives from what she called a persistent myth that she performed cartwheels at the police station after Kercher's death, which Knox maintains were yoga stretches, though she cartwheels off stage at the end of the show.
Knox co-created the performance with her husband, novelist Christopher Robinson, whom she met at a book launch in 2015 and married three years later. The couple lives on Vashon Island, a community of about 10,000 near Seattle, where they raise their daughter Eureka Muse, born in 2021, and two-year-old son Echo.
Cartwheel debuted before an audience of about 30 at the Black Cat Cabaret on Vashon Island, an intimate venue known for burlesque, belly dancing, and experimental music. It was later performed at Tacoma Little Theatre in Tacoma, where managing artistic director Chris Serface reported a standing ovation and suggested the material could become a Netflix comedy special. Seattle theatre critic Greg Heilman also praised Knox's stage presence and dry wit.
Legal history and previous projects
Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were arrested, detained, and convicted of Kercher's sexual assault and murder in 2009. They were acquitted in 2011, reconvicted in 2014, and finally cleared by Italy's highest court in 2015 due to a lack of evidence.
Knox retains a criminal conviction for slander after wrongly accusing Congolese man Patrick Lumumba of the murder, though her three-year sentence was ruled served by her four years in prison. Knox has repeatedly stated that she continued public appearances to reclaim her narrative from others.
Knox received a £3 million advance for her 2013 memoir Waiting To Be Heard, and published a second memoir, Free: My Search For Meaning, last year. She participated in a 2016 Netflix documentary and served as executive producer for the 2025 Hulu drama series The Twisted Tale Of Amanda Knox.
Knox and her husband co-produced the documentary Mouth Of The Wolf, documenting her return to Italy and meeting with prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. In April, Knox visited south London for cinema question-and-answer sessions, though the film screening was cancelled because it lacked a British age classification.
Knox hosts the podcasts Hard Knox, featuring interviews on wrongful convictions, and Doubt, where she discussed cases including Lucy Letby. She is also a keynote speaker for the Innocence Network, and appeared on the cover of The List, the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe magazine. In a 2021 New York Times interview, Knox stated she wished to stop living her worst experience once financial necessity no longer required it to pay her mortgage.
The surviving members of the Kercher family are Stephanie Kercher and her brothers Lyle and John. Their father, John Kercher, 77, died in January 2020 after a suspected hit-and-run near his Croydon home, and their mother, Arline Kercher, died weeks later in hospital during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
