Ryan Murphy pushes back against Netflix's decision to remove Dahmer LGBTQ tag

Ryan Murphy questioned Netflix's decision to remove his Jeffrey Dahmer true crime series from the streamer's LGBTQ tag.

The series creator of Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story addressed the controversy, wherein the tag was removed a few days after the show's premiere following social media backlash, in a recent interview with The New York Times.

"There was a moment on Netflix where they removed the LGBTQ tag from Dahmer and I didn't like it, and I asked why they did that and they said because people were upset because it was an upsetting story," Murphy said. "I was, like, 'Well, yeah.' But it was a story of a gay man and more importantly, his gay victims."

Murphy added that he does not believe "that all gay stories have to be happy stories."

He also addressed accusations that the show headlined by Evan Peters exploited the trauma of the victims' — many of whom were Black men — families, noting that he wanted to shine a light on the racism and homophobia surrounding the case, as "it was the biggest thing I've ever seen that really sort of examines how easy it is to get away with things with the white privilege aspects."

"What are the rules now?" Murphy asked. "Should we never do a movie about a tyrant?"

While it debuted in Netflix's Top 10, Dahmer has been mired in controversy since its release. Viewers condemned the decision to categorize it under the LGBTQ tag as "gross" and "wrong," with some lamenting that "this is not the representation we're looking for." The families of some of the victims also slammed it as exploitative and maintained that Murphy and his collaborators never reached out to them, while a production assistant called it "one of the worst shows she's worked on" as a person of color.

In response, Murphy clarified the research methods behind the show and claimed he reached out to victims' loved ones but did not hear back. "It's something that we researched for a very long time," he previously said. "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."

"It was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people," Murphy added.

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