Amanda Knox Pushes Back on Matt Damon’s ‘Cancel Culture’ Prison Comparison

Amanda Knox responds to Matt Damon’s Joe Rogan remarks comparing cancel culture to prison, arguing both leave lasting scars.

Amanda Knox Slams Matt Damon for 'Cancel Culture' Comments: 'Could Have Run By Me'
Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Variety via Getty Images | Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Netflix

Amanda Knox is once again pushing back on Matt Damon's recent remarks, this time over his comparison of public “cancel culture” backlash to serving time in prison.

The exchange began after Damon and Ben Affleck appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, where they discussed how prolonged public condemnation can linger for years.

During the conversation, Damon suggested that some people might prefer to serve a defined jail sentence rather than endure indefinite public shaming, arguing that reputational damage “never ends” and can follow someone for life.

Knox, who spent four years incarcerated in Italy before being fully exonerated, responded publicly after the episode circulated online. Sharing a headline about Damon’s comments, she wrote, “Another thing Matt Damon could have run by me before putting out into the world.”

In follow-up replies, Knox expanded on her point, emphasizing that incarceration does not offer the clean closure Damon described. “You don’t get to go to prison in secret,” she wrote. “It comes with its own stigma and lasting trauma. You don’t just get to ‘be done with it,’ personally or socially.”

When another user noted that some people targeted by public shaming have died by suicide, Knox replied plainly: “People commit suicide in prison, too.”

Knox was twice convicted, and later acquitted, by the Italian courts in the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, with Rudy Guede ultimately found responsible in a separate trial. Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were released from an Italian prison in 2011.

Her criticism of Damon also echoes objections she raised in 2021 when he starred in Stillwater, a film whose director acknowledged was inspired in part by her case. According to The New York Post, Knox argued at the time that the project blurred fiction and reality, reigniting suspicions she had worked to put behind her.

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