Ryan Murphy Responds to Criticism of 'Dahmer' & Reacts to Netflix Removing the LGBTQ Tag

In a New York Times profile, Ryan defended the production.

“What are the rules now? Should we never do a movie about a tyrant?” he said.

He added that he wanted to tell the story because “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.”

He also revealed that he isn’t a fan of Netflix removing the LGBTQ tag from Dahmer after viewers complained.

“I also don’t think that all gay stories have to be happy stories… I asked why they did that, and they said because people were upset because it was an upsetting story. I was, like, ‘Well, yeah.’ But it was a story of a gay man and more importantly, his gay victims.”

As for backlash from the victims’ families, Ryan says they reached out to try and get feedback first.

“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 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,” he said at an event at Los Angeles’ DGA Theater.

Ryan Murphy also just revealed which A-list star he originally targeted to portray Mr. Schuester (aka Mr. Schue) on Glee.