Ariana Grande is facing backlash for recent comments she made. The mother of one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims said the singer must be “sick in her mind” for naming the serial killer as her dream dinner date. “To me, it seems like she’s sick in her mind. 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,” Shirley Hughes, the mother of Anthony “Tony” Hughes, told TMZ on Thursday. Tony, who was deaf and didn’t speak, became one of Dahmer’s 17 victims after meeting him in a gay bar in 1991. He was 31 when he was drugged and killed in Dahmer’s home. Shirley and Tony’s sister Barbara expressed similar sentiments, telling the outlet that Grande should be more mindful of her words when thinking about the victims’ surviving loved ones. Barbara went on to say that Grande’s comments only continued to glamorize the murderer, who was beaten to death in prison in 1994, and that she wished the “yes, and?” singer would apologize to send a message to her fanbase that her comments were unacceptable. “Unfortunately, until it happens to her and her family, she just doesn’t know what we have been through,” Barbara told the outlet.
Earlier this month, Grande appeared on Penn Badgley’s “Podcrushed” podcast where she revealed she was “infatuated with serial killers” during her youth. As she recalled a Q&A session with some of her young fans, she remembered a young girl who asked her who she would like to have dinner with dead or alive. “I was like, ‘Oh, you’re so cute. Mom and Dad, is it OK if I give the real answer?’ And they were like ‘Sure, what’s the answer?’ and I was like, ‘I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer is pretty fascinating. I think I would have loved to have met him. Y’know, maybe with a third party or someone involved. But I have questions,” she remembered. Later in the episode, Grande opened up about her Nickelodeon experience and admitted she was “reprocessing” some of her memories as one of the stars on “Victorious” and “Sam & Cat” as she unpacked the bombshell “Quiet on Set” documentary. “Specifically about our show, I think that was something that we were convinced was the cool thing about us — is that we pushed the envelope with our humor,” she said. “And the innuendos were … it was, like, the cool differentiation. And I don’t know, I think it just all happened so quickly, and now looking back on some of the clips, I’m like, ‘Damn, really? Oh, s–t’ … and the things that weren’t approved for the network were snuck onto, like, our website or whatever,” she continued, adding, “I guess I’m upset, yeah.”
