Ariana Grande has sparked online backlash by naming notorious serial killer, sex offender, and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered and dismembered seventeen boys and men between 1978 and 1991, as her dream dinner guest, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The pop star made the shocking confession during an appearance on Penn Badgley's "Podcrushed"podcast last week after the Gossip Girl/You actor starred in her recent the boy is mine music video.
"I was infatuated with serial killers when I was younger," Grande admitted. "Years ago, before the Dahmer series, I was in a Q&A with young fans ... With a parent, someone said, 'If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be?'"
"And I was like, 'Oh, honey, you’re so cute. Um, mom and dad, is it OK if I give the real answer?' And they were like, 'Sure, what’s the answer?' I was like, 'Jeffrey Dahmer’s pretty fascinating. I think I would have loved to have met him, maybe with a third party or someone involved. But I have questions.' The parents were like, 'We’ll explain it later, sweetheart.'"
While Grande intended the story as a humorous anecdote about her interest in true crime cases, users quickly flocked to social media to call her out, slamming her comments as "tone deaf, "vile," and "horribly offensive."
"I genuinely do not understand what she was going for here, the families of his victims are still very much alive and have said they hate that people glorify him and make shows about him and forget the victims," one Reddit user wrote. "She thinks she’s being edgy but she is just a tone deaf person who doesn’t care about other people’s pain."
"This is so vile… I have a great interest in crime cases but the LAST thing I’d want to do is have dinner with a serial killer. Jeffrey Dahmer was a pedophile who murdered innocent people, mainly people of colour because he knew police wouldn’t take their disappearances as seriously," someone else commented.
"Joking about wanting to have dinner with him is sick and horribly offensive to the victims’ families, who are still alive and affected by the tragedy fyi. Let’s stop glorifying these psychos and pretending they are intensely enamoring people – they’re not, and if you met them in real life you would quickly realize why."
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Others, however, were less concerned with her admission. "Why would anyone be shocked when someone who’s into the occult wants to hang out with a serial killer? That’s like an NBA fan saying they’d have dinner with Will Chamberlain," one X user tweeted. RadarOnline.com has reached out to a representative of Grande for comment.
Ryan Murphy's 2022 Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story drew renewed attention to the infamous killer, sparking backlash for allegedly glamorizing his crimes and inspiring numerous Halloween costumes.