A production assistant on Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer series has opened up about her negative experience on the set of the show, describing it as “one of the worst” she’s worked on as a person of color.
The new Jeffrey Dahmer dramatized Netflix series by Ryan Murphy, titled “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and starring Evan Peters, has come under fire yet again.
For those not in the know, Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender who murdered seventeen men from 1978 to 1991. Therefore it seemed inevitable that a series surrounding him would draw up controversy, from its LGBTQ+ listing on Netflix, to its viewers romanticizing a real murderer.
Now, complaints of on-set conditions have been added to the list, as a production assistant has opened up about her experience on the show.
Jeffrey Dahmer Netflix show created the “worst” environment
One crew member named Kim Alsup recently tweeted that she was “treated horribly” while filming the show, which she assumes was due to her race.
This mistreatment included being mistaken for a Black colleague, despite them having noticeable differences in appearance: “I worked on this project and I was 1 of 2 Black people on the crew and they kept calling me her name.
“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.”
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she stated that this series was “one of the worst shows” that she’s ever worked on as a person of color, alleging: “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.”
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This situation is particularly awful considering how Netflix’s Dahmer series addresses the societal racism that allowed Dahmer to kill for as long as he did.
Alsup did note that conditions got somewhat better during the filming of the show’s sixth episode, due to it having been written by Janet Mock and directed by Paris Barclay, who are both people of color. But overall, the production assistant found the whole filming experience “exhausting.”
Dahmer show has broken records, despite giving people “PTSD”
Alsup also alleged that there were no mental health coordinators available on the set of Netflix’s Dahmer series, which was especially troubling regarding the series’ serious subject matter. Alsup even admitted: “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.”
Biopic media has always been considered gray in terms of ethics, but when the conditions on set contradict the very message that the show is trying to convey, it’s hard to decide who this show is truly for.
However, despite the controversy, the show has still managed to break records for currently having the biggest viewership week on the streaming service.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is currently available to stream on Netflix.