Ryan Murphy, the creator of the Netflix series Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, said he and his team tried to reach out to the victims’ families and friends while doing research for the series about the eponymous serial killer. “It’s something that we researched for a very long time,†he said at an event for the show in Los Angeles on October 27, per The Hollywood Reporter. “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 who … I don’t even know how they found a lot of this stuff. But it was just like a night-and-day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people.â€
The series has been under fire since its September release, with some critics saying the show diminishes and exploits the deaths of the 17 men and boys Dahmer killed for entertainment’s sake. Those close to the victims have expressed their frustration with the series on the record, making it clear that they do not want to “relive†the trauma through a TV show that closely focuses on the killer. Even Dahmer’s father is reportedly considering a lawsuit. When star Niecy Nash wondered why no one had yet to create a memorial to honor victims at the event, Murphy tossed around the idea of building the memorial himself. “Anything that we could do to get that to happen, you know, I would even be happy to pay for it myself,†he said. Maybe wait until you get the green light from the people grieving …