When Netflix’s Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story hit the streaming service in September, no one knew what to expect. Out of respect for the real-life victims of the “Milwaukee Cannibal” and their relatives, showrunner Ryan Murphy kept marketing for the series to the absolute minimum. Despite little information about the show, no publicity, and no advance copies shared with critics, Dahmer didn’t stay a mystery for long: the series amassed over 1 billion hours viewed in its first 60 days.

While everyone involved was deeply committed to approaching Dahmer’s grisly crimes in a manner that was respectful to his victims and de-centered the serial killer himself, the series faced a plethora of criticisms. A significant amount of the backlash came when Dahmer was listed under Netflix’s LGBTQ tag—which, until then, was reserved for “uplifting” queer content. Though the series was ultimately removed from the LGBTQ category, Murphy defended the decision for a multitude of reasons.

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“I think that it got the tag, one, because of my involvement. I’m a gay man, so most of my stories deal with some sort of LGBTQ thing and I do that selfishly; when I was growing up, I had nothing [to look to],” Murphy told Variety for a new cover story alongside star Evan Peters.

“My mission statement has been to talk about those stories and those characters and unearth buried history.”

Murphy Says You Can’t Separate Dahmer from Its LGBTQ Content

     Netflix

Beyond a gay man’s involvement in the series, Murphy says that a show truthfully documenting the horrors committed by Dahmer is inseparable from the fact that they were driven by homophobia. Though Murphy understands how portraying crimes against gay men and boys and labeling them as LGBTQ might be distressing to some, he says his job as an artist is to show an accurate reflection—which is not always a pretty one.

He said, “Many people in the community want to uplift, I understand that. It’s about homophobia. I have a saying: ‘My job as an artist is to hold up a mirror about what happened.’ It’s ugly. It’s not pretty. Do you want to look at it? If you do, watch it. If you don’t, look away, and sometimes, some of this outrage is directed at the frame of the mirror instead of the reflection.”

“I try and say, I really understand why you’re upset about the inclusion of that. I understand it, but I also disagree with it personally,” he added.

Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now streaming on Netflix.