How Did Amanda Knox Make Her Surprise Cameo in Peacock’s Laid?

Amanda Knox made a surprise appearance in Peacock’s Laid — but how did it come to be?

During the season finale, which premiered earlier this month, Zosia Mamet‘s character, AJ, accidentally scored a dinner with Knox, 37. AJ’s friend Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) surprised her in an attempt to mend things after sleeping with AJ’s on-and-off boyfriend.

“Your boyfriend said you always say, ‘If I could just have one hour with Amanda Knox,’” Knox told AJ in the scene. “Well, I’m Amanda Knox, and you have one hour.”

Mamet, 36, broke down the scene, telling IndieWire on December 21, “We kept the set very small that night because we didn’t want any spoilers and wanted to respect Amanda’s privacy. It wasn’t dissimilar to the scene that we shot.”

The actress praised Knox’s involvement. “[Amanda’s] wonderful and so kind and so smart and so open about her experience,” Mamet added. “She’s a force. She’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

After the entire season was released on Peacock, Knox offered a glimpse of her cameo. “It was fun to take a break from courtroom drama to cameo in this TV comedy and do a scene with @zosiamamet,” she wrote via Instagram.

Knox was thrust into the spotlight in 2007 when she was accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher while they were studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison after she and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were both convicted of the crime despite a lack of evidence.

An appellate court later found the former couple not guilty in 2011, but they were again found guilty three years later during a retrial. The Italian supreme court cleared Knox of Kercher’s murder in 2015, and she was exonerated.

Ivorian migrant Rudy Guede was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years for Kercher’s murder after his DNA was identified at the crime scene. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released from prison in November 2021.

During her interrogation in 2007, Knox, then 20, accused her then-boss Patrick Lumumba of the murder, which led to his arrest and two-week incarceration. Knox signed two statements prepared by police regarding this accusation before walking back the claims.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2023 that Knox’s rights were violated during the interrogation that ultimately led to her accusation against Lumumba. As a result, Italy’s supreme court ordered a retrial at the appellate court level.

Knox was ultimately reconvicted of slander in June by an Italian court. She originally was convicted in 2009 of slander for falsely accusing Lumumba of murdering Kercher, and the appellate court upheld that conviction nearly two decades after Kercher’s murder.

Knox, who shares two kids with husband Christopher Robin, didn’t serve more jail time, given the four years she already spent behind bars following her wrongful imprisonment for Kercher’s murder.