The Most Disturbing Fan Mail World Beyond's Nico Tortorella Received
Fame is a double-edged sword, equally honed on either end. Sure, there are upshots like the spotlight, the ability to shape the cultural dialogue, the piles of free stuff, the potential for lifelong financial security, and the constant hobnobbing with the world's most beautiful people. But, on the down side, sometimes the fans get weird.
It's a phenomenon that most celebrities have probably brushed up against: onlookers with issues, making unorthodox jabs at forming a connection. Johnny Cash got a series of creepy letters in the '70s, comparing his daughter to Cleopatra and implying that she would be receiving a shipment of poisonous snakes. Streamers get weird correspondence from their viewers with astonishing frequency. And in a recent interview, helpfully published by Interview Magazine, Nico Tortorella of The Walking Dead: World Beyond discussed the particular brand of weirdness that one can expect to receive in the mail when one makes a paycheck by pretending to splatter the living dead.
The interview, which is made up of questions written by the late Andy Warhol, somehow skews more bizarre than its premise. When Tortorella was asked who the greatest living artist is, they answered "Numbers. Math. Code! The internet?" And when the 32-year-old actor was questioned about the strangest thing they'd been sent by a fan, stuff got all the more funky.
Nico Tortorella's Walking Dead fans got kind of weird
"A letter from prison," Tortorella began, innocuously enough. "It was nice in theory." Unfortunately, there's always a "but."
"But," the Walking Dead: World Beyond star continued, "there were pictures of me on a cross and bleeding, and it was just a lot. And a dog! Yes, really."
Unfortunately, Andy Warhol didn't have any follow ups, and the segment's peculiar "questions from a dead guy" format left the details of Tortorella's crucifixion-heavy fan art murky. More than anything, it would be nice to know how the dog entered into things. There are some mysteries that the world at large will never unravel.
From a glass-is-half-full perspective, it's worth noting that Tortorella's bloody messianic fan art isn't the most bizarre thing that a fan has sent to a celebrity. According to The Hollywood Reporter, in 2013, Jared Leto received a human ear in the mail, which he gave the macaroni necklace treatment by threading some yarn through it wearing it around his neck. NME reports that in the 1970s, Dolly Parton opened her door to find a newborn child with a note reading "My name is Jolene, my momma has left me here and she wants you to have me." Electing not to turn it into jewelry, she instead called Health and Human Services.