In an 8.4 Variety interview Amanda Knox told Chris Willman that she hadn’t yet seen Tom McCarthy‘s Stillwater. (She added she wouldn’t mind being invited to a screening while hinting that paying to see it might be a bridge too far.) I wrote yesterday that this didn’t make a lot of sense, and that Knox should’ve paid to see it at a local plex as soon as she was able to, in order to lend authority to her argument that the film had unfairly appropriated her legal troubles in Italy from over a decade ago.

And now, in a just-posted interview with Variety‘s Janelle Riley, McCarthy has pounced on Knox’s admission that she hasn’t seen the film.

Riley: “I’m sure you’re aware Amanda Knox has taken issue with the film, saying it’s based too closely to her own story. What’s your response?”

McCarthy: “I deeply empathize with Amanda and what she went through. She was rightfully found innocent and acquitted in the Meredith Kercher case. She has platforms to speak her truth and engage with the media and she is exercising her absolute right to do so. But, by her own account, she has not seen Stillwater and what she seems to be raising feels very removed from the film we actually made.

“Stillwater is a work of fiction and not about her life experience. It does take from aspects of true life events, like many films, but Stillwater is about Bill Baker’s journey, his relationship with his estranged daughter Allison and a French woman and her young daughter he meets along the way. The questions the movie poses about American identity and moral authority are what compelled me to make this film. But I do think good films spark conversation in and around the story, and I welcome audiences’ engagement in that.”

In short, McCarthy is better at this game than Knox.