Ariana Grande tells Penn Badgley she once wished she could have had dinner with Dahmer

There is no shortage of (controversial) fascination with infamous Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer — who was thrust back into the public consciousness with Ryan Murphy's blockbuster 2022 Netflix series "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story."

Add pop superstar Ariana Grande to the list of people so interested in Dahmer that she recently admitted she once wished she could have dinner with him.

On the heels of her latest album "Eternal Sunshine" and ahead of a starring role in the "Wicked" movie adaptation out this November, Grande appeared on the "Podcrushed" podcast co-hosted by Penn Badgley. Badgley stars in Grande's new music video for "The Boy Is Mine," and he plays serial killer and stalker Joe Goldberg on Netflix's hit series "You."

In the second part of her interview on the podcast, released Monday, Grande, around the 30-minute mark, starts telling Badgley and co-hosts Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari about how she was "infatuated with serial killers when I was younger."

Grande then appears to hesitate to share a story that is "not funny" before saying "no, it's fine" and revealing her interest in Dahmer — which she initially revealed in a Q&A with young fans about a decade earlier.

"Years ago, before the 'Dahmer' series, I was in a Q&A with young fans," Grande recalled, sometime after starring in the Nickelodeon series "Sam & Cat," which ended in 2014, and as she was launching her music career. "With a parent, someone said, 'If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be?' And I was like, 'Oh honey, you're so cute. Um, Mom and Dad, is it OK if I give the real answer?'"

With the parents' permission, Grande said she told the fan, "Jeffrey Dahmer's pretty fascinating. I think I would have loved to have met him, maybe with like a third party or something. But I have questions. … And the parents were like, 'We'll explain it later, sweetheart.'"

Grande's response triggered some uneasy chuckles from the "Podcrushed" hosts; Badgley stepped in to offer some context that Grande's mother was a big horror fan.

They got on the topic in the first place when Badgley humorously asked about Grande's interest in serial killers, having cast him in the "The Boy Is Mine" video and Evan Peters, who played Dahmer in Murphy's series, in her video for "We Can't Be Friends."

Dahmer confessed to murdering 17 people between 1978 and 1991. He was killed in prison in 1994.

More: What's real and what's fiction in Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer series, ‘Monster’

More: Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 people before his crimes were discovered. These are the victims and what we knew about them

Like Murphy's series, artists who have referenced Dahmer in past songs — including Kesha, Eminem and rapper Juicy J (who referenced Dahmer in his verse on Katy Perry's "Dark Horse") — have received criticism for glorifying a murderer. Perry Farrell got an icy reception at a Jane's Addiction set at Fiserv Forum in 2022 for his comments about Dahmer.

“I’m not telling anyone what to watch, I know true crime media is huge (right now), but if you’re actually curious about the victims, my family are pissed about this show,” Eric Perry, cousin of Errol Lindsey, one of Dahmer's victims, tweeted after the show was released. "“It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what?” Perry said. “How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?”

Entertainment Weekly first reported Grande's Dahmer comments.

"

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ariana Grande's one-time dinner date choice: Jeffrey Dahmer