Ariana Grande Wants to Have Dinner With Who?
If Ariana Grande could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be? Bet you can’t guess. Appearing on Penn Badgley’s podcast Podcrushed earlier this month, Grande said she would choose … Jeffrey Dahmer? Though the revelation was met with laugher from the podcast hosts, it quickly sparked backlash, with many criticizing her for making light of an infamous serial killer.
Appearing on the podcast, Grande recalled being at a Q&A event with young fans when she was in her teens. “Someone said, ‘If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be?’” After asking parents if she could give her honest answer, Grande said she told the crowd, “Jeffrey Dahmer’s pretty fascinating.” Grande told the podcast hosts: “I think I would have loved to have met him. You know, maybe with a third party or someone involved. But I have questions.”
Dahmer notoriously killed, dismembered, and cannibalized 17 men and boys, largely targeting gay men before he was beaten to death in prison in 1994. Fans were quick to criticize her comments as “disgusting” and “vile,” and now, the family of one of Dahmer’s victims has weighed in. Speaking with TMZ, Shirley Hughes and Barbara Hughes-Holt, the mother and sister of Tony Hughes — a deaf, nonverbal man who Dahmer targeted and killed in 1991 — slammed Grande’s comments.
“It seems like she’s sick in her mind,” Hughes said. “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.” Like many of Grande’s critics, Hughes added that it was concerning that Grande didn’t seem to consider Dahmer’s victims and their families — a sentiment she also expressed in 2022 following Ryan Murphy’s award-winning show about Dahmer.
Hughes-Holt added: “Unfortunately, until it happens to her and her family, she just doesn’t know what we have been through.”
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