Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer in the Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. (Netflix)
A crew member on Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has claimed she was “treated horribly” while working on the Netflix show.
On 18 September, prior to the Netflix series premiering, production coordinator Kim Alsup spoke of her experience on the show in a telling Tweet that went viral.
“I worked on this project and I was one of two Black people on the crew and they kept calling me her [the other Black woman’s] name,” she wrote.
“We both had braids, she was dark skin and 5’10. I’m 5’5. Working on this took everything I had as I was treated horribly. I look at the Black female lead differently now too.”
‘The trailer gave me PTSD’
Alsup subsequently to the Los Angeles Times about her experience, and said she’d not watched the Dahmer series because of the treatment she endured.
“I just feel like it’s going to bring back too many memories of working on it. I don’t want to have these PTSD types of situations.
“The trailer itself gave me PTSD, which is why I ended up writing that tweet and I didn’t think that anybody was going to read,” she explained.
The production coordinator, who has worked on Grey’s Anatomy, Inventing Anna, and Dear White People, said the Dahmer production was “exhausting”.
She also claimed the set had no mental health coordinators available, which led her to think of it as an unsupportive environment.
“It was one of the worst shows that I’ve ever worked on. I was always being called someone else’s name, the only other Black girl who looked nothing like me, and I learned the names for 300 background extras,” she told The Times.
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has been previously subject to criticism for exploiting the notorious serial killer’s string of murders for television.
The family of one of Dahmer’s victims has slammed Netflix for “retraumatising” them over the true crime series.
“How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?” Eric Perry, cousin to Dahmer victim Errol Lindsay, wrote on Twitter.
“Like recreating my cousin having an emotional breakdown in court in the face of the man who tortured and murdered her brother is WILD. WIIIIIILD.”
The psychological horror – made by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan – was initially labelled as LGBTQ+ by Netflix, but following backlash the tag has been removed.
From 1978 to 1991, Dahmer is known to have killed at least 17 men, many of whom were underage and people of colour.
The series outlines the chilling acts of murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism orchestrated by Dahmer, with some viewing claiming the show’s depiction is unnecessary.
PinkNews has contacted Netflix and attempted to reach out to Alsup for comment.