Black Dahmer crew member Kim Alsup recently called the series “one of the worst shows” she’s worked on.
According to The Los Angeles Times, Alsup opened up about being a crew member for the disturbing hit Netflix series and how it impacted her mental health.
“It was one of the worst shows that I’ve ever worked on” as a Black woman, the Dahmer production coordinator revealed. She expounded upon her sentiment, adding that she kept being mistaken for another Black girl on set.
“I was always being called someone else’s name, the only other Black girl who looked nothing like me, and I learned the names for 300 background extras,” Kim said.
In tweets posted to her now-private Twitter account, she explained that she and the other Black woman had similarities but didn’t look alike.
“They kept calling me her name,” she reportedly wrote. “We both had braids. She was dark skin and 5’10. I’m 5’5. Working on this took everything I had as I was treated horribly. I look at the Black female lead differently now too.”
Alsup even said that she hadn’t yet watched Dahmer due to negative memories attached to her time working on it.
“I just feel like it’s going to bring back too many memories of working on it. I don’t want to have these PTSD types of situations,” she told the LA Times. “The trailer itself gave me PTSD, which is why I ended up writing that tweet and I didn’t think that anybody was going to read.”
The crew member also alleged that there weren’t any mental health representatives on set, which she claimed is the reason for her allegedly uncomfortable experience. However, she noted that it improved during the production of Episode 6, titled “Silenced.” The episode was directed by Black television producer and writer Paris Barclay and Black writer and media personality Janet Mock.
Despite the eventual improvement of the Netflix series’ working environment though, Alsup said it was, overall, “exhausting.”
As Sis2Sis reported, Dahmer is about a notorious serial killer who was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences after heinously murdering 17 young men and boys–many of which were Black. The Netflix series, which viewers have called insensitive and traumatizing, was released on September 21.
