Joe Pera is a wholesome comedian known for his extremely nice, cult beloved (but canceled too soon) Adult Swim series, Joe Pera Talks With You. He’s really into tomatoes!
In other words, the Buffalo native is pretty much the last person anyone would associate with notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who is the subject of a new Netflix miniseries starring Evan Peters, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. And yet, after the series premiered last week, all anyone could do was remark about how Peters’ Dahmer seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to Pera, as dozens upon dozens of people on Twitter have since pointed out.
This is unlikely to come as a surprise, but Pera is not flattered by the comparisons to the portrayal of a serial killer. Speaking with Gawker, Pera was asked if he thought that Peters sounded like him, and it sounds as though he would rather talk about anything but.
“I don’t wanna watch it. The past week I’ve been getting a lot of texts and emails from old friends that I haven’t heard from in years, and I’m excited to open them because I think they’re gonna say something like, ‘I heard you’re on tour this fall, wanna get beers when you’re in Ithaca?’ Or something like that. Then I open them and they’re just like, ‘The actor on Dahmer sounds like you.’”
Fair enough. Let those who also would not want to be associated with a sex offender who murdered 17 people cast the first stone. Later in the interview, after attempting to break down Peters’ puzzling accent, Pera gave a measured, reasoned response when asked if he would have played Dahmer, had Netflix asked him first.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know what’s to be learned from Jeffrey Dahmer in 2022. I think the money should be given to people who want to build the world with a little imagination, and not just make the same Jeffrey Dahmer story over and over again.”
It’s not hard to read between the lines, there. If anyone from Netflix is reading this, a great investment would be to let Pera do a little world-building of his own — whether to throw a lifeline to Joe Pera Talks With You or another unrelated project. We could all use more Joe Pera and less Jeffrey Dahmer.