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Ryan Murphy, the creator and director of the hit Netflix show "Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," revealed that he and his team reached out to 20 of the serial killer's victims’ families and friends during the time it took to research and prepare for the series.
"It’s something that we researched for a very long time," Murphy said at an event for the show at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles on Thursday. "And we, over the course of the three, three and a half years when we were really writing it, working on it, we reached out to 20, around 20 of the victims’ families and friends trying to get input, trying to talk to people and not a single person responded to us in that process. So we relied very, very heavily on our incredible group of researchers. But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people."
The hit Netflix series has garnered criticism, with claims that the show was "sympathetic" to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and that certain events were not portrayed accurately. The show depicts the life of the serial killer, who committed murders between 1978 and 1991.
"Something that we talked a lot in the making of it is we weren’t so much interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the person, but what made him the monster that he became," Murphy continued. "We talked a lot about that…and we talked about it all the time. It’s really about white privilege. It’s about systemic racism. It’s about homophobia."
Earlier this month, show co-creator Ian Brennan echoed Murphy's sentiments.
Ryan Murphy is the creator and director of the hit Netflix show "Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story." (2014 Getty Images)
"I think we show a human being," he told Page Six. "He’s monstrously human, and he’s monstrously monstrous and that’s what we wanted to sort of unpack. We tried to show an objective portrait as possible. We did our homework."
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Some of the show's criticism also came from those who felt yet another Hollywood portrayal of the serial killer was unnecessary and triggering.
Dahmer. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. (L to R) Shaun J. Brown as Tracy Edwards, Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer in episode 101 of "Dahmer. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story." (Courtesy Of Netflix © 2022)
"I'm not telling anyone what to watch, I know true crime media is huge rn, but if you're actually curious about the victims, my family (the Isbell's) are pissed about this show," Eric Perry, the cousin of Dahmer's victim Errol Lindsey, posted on Twitter. "It's retraumatizing over and over again, and for what? How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?"
Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer shown in a police mug shot from his 1982 arrest at the Wisconsin State Fair for indecent exposure. (Photo by Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty Images)
The mother of Anthony Hughes, another of Dahmer's victims, also claimed the way her son's death was portrayed in the show "didn't happen."
"I don't see how they can do that," Shirley Hughes told The Guardian. "I don't see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there."
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