On a recent episode of Penn Badgley’s podcast, Podcrushed, Ariana Grande recounted a fan Q&A during which she revealed she’d “love to have met” serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
According to the singer and actor, the event in question took place earlier in her career, between her time on Nickelodeon and full ascent to pop stardom. Grande was asked who she’d pick for a dinner with anyone dead or alive — and her answer wasn’t quite what the crowd of mostly young fans had anticipated.
“Jeffrey Dahmer’s pretty fascinating. I think I would’ve loved to have met him,” she recalled saying, before jokingly clarifying, “Maybe with a third party or something.”
She continued, “I have questions I would have loved [to ask him]. The parents were like, ‘We’ll explain later.’” Badgley diverted the discussion by recalling when he met Grande’s mother, resulting in a conversation about all things macabre, gothic, and horror-related.
“I was infatuated with serial killers when I was younger,” Grande noted.
While the hosts of Podcrushed mostly laughed off Grande’s comments, the family of Tony Hughes, one of Dahmer’s victims, didn’t have the same reaction.
“To me, it seems like she’s sick in her mind,” Hughes’ mother, Shirley, commented to TMZ. “It’s not fancy or funny to say you would have wanted to do dinner with him. It’s also not something you should say to young people, which she says she did.” Dahmer murdered 17 people between the late ’70s and early ’90s, mostly gay men and boys of color.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Grande noted that her fascination with the killer came prior to Netflix’s dramatization of his crimes, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which also didn’t sit well with families of victims.
Watch part 2 of Podcrushed episode below, or jump to 30 minutes in to hear Grande’s comments about Dahmer.