Ani’s rape storyline really happened to the author of Luckiest Girl Alive

Jessica Knoll wrote an essay in 2016 discussing her experiences

3 years ago

Trash

Trigger warning: Discussion of rape

Netflix’s latest movie Luckiest Girl Alive starring Mila Kunis dropped over the weekend. The movie is based on a novel of the same and it follows Ani FaNelli, a young woman in New York City who has reinvented her life following a series of traumatic events during her high school years that she has to relive after being asked to be part of a documentary. The new movie is based on the 2015 New York Times bestseller by Jessica Knoll.

Some of the events from Luckiest Girl Alive are from Jessica Knoll’s own personal experiences. Here is the true story behind Netflix’s Luckiest Girl Alive:

Like Ani, Knoll was raped in high school

One true story in Luckiest Girl Alive is when viewers see Ani being gang raped at a party by three of her male classmates. Ani’s experiences are downplayed by her peers and questioned and doubted by her mother. Similar to Ani in the movie, Knoll also experienced being gang raped while being a student at a private school and was dismissed by her school peers.

via Netflix

When Luckiest Girl Alive was initially published, Knoll said the novel was fiction but a year later she wrote an essay explaining the truth behind it. Speaking with Today, Knoll said: “I always feel a little undeserving of being called like brave or courageous, because I had to open up in fiction. There were these dueling things inside of me. I desperately craved the release of getting my story out on paper, and the validation of recognising what had happened to me as rape. I needed that.

“But on the other hand, I was frightened that people would read it and come to the same conclusion that people did when I was in high school, which was that no violation had occurred and that I had somehow participated in it.”

Jessica Knoll was in high school during the Columbine High School mass shooting

During Luckiest Girl Alive, two of Ani’s classmates take guns to their school and begin to shoot their peers. Two of those who are killed are Ani’s rapists and the third is paralysed from the waist down. Knoll said she was in high school when the Columbine High School mass shooting took place in Colorado, an event she said always “stuck with her”.

via Netflix

“I still had the idea in my head that what happened to Ani wasn’t bad enough, because that’s what happened to me. I thought I had to make it worse,” Knoll said.

Both Ani and Knoll come forward about their trauma in similar ways

In the movie, after Dean finally admits to Ani what he did to her, she goes on to write an essay for the New York Magazine about her experiences. Jessica Knoll wrote Luckiest Girl Alive to tell her story and letter published an essay about her experience.

Luckiest Girl Alive is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.