During the three-plus years it took to research and prepare for Netflix’s highly controversial Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, creator Ryan Murphy said he and his crew reached out to 20 relatives and friends of the titular serial killer’s victims.
“It’s something that we researched for a very long time,” Murphy said Thursday at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We reached out to 20, around 20, of the victims’ families and friends trying to get input, trying to talk to people.”
He said not a single person responded, prompting them to rely heavily on the research group’s findings.
The series, which features Evan Peters as the titular serial killer and revisits the period between the ‘70s and ‘90s when Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 people, debuted on the streaming service on Sept. 21.
Dahmer has courted controversy frequently since its release, including backlash from the victims’ families, some of whom alleged Netflix nor Murphy had not reached out to them.
Rita Isbell, the sister of Errol Lindsey, who was killed by Dahmer in 1991, stated in an essay for Insider that “it bothered me” to watch her victim impact statement from the murderer’s 1992 trial recreated in the program.
“I could even understand it if they gave some of the money to the victims’ children… The victims have children and grandchildren,” Isbell wrote. “If the show benefited them in some way, it wouldn’t feel so harsh and careless. It’s sad that they’re just making money off of this tragedy. That’s just greed.”
The show also came under fire for its initial inclusion in the LGBTQ content category. Following an outcry from viewers, Netflix removed the LGBTQ tag.
Despite all the controversy and backlash, Dahmer continues to dominate the ratings. The show topped Nielsen’s Top 10 Streaming Programs for the week of Sept. 26 through Oct. 2, with 4.37 billion hours viewed. For the week of Oct. 10, Dahmer was the second most-watched English-language TV series on Netflix, with 69.11 million hours viewed.
Murphy said the show is about making the victims be more than a statistic.
“They weren’t just numbers. They weren’t just pictures on billboards and telephone poles,” he said. “They were real people with loving families, breathing, living, hoping. That’s what we wanted it to be about.”