Carole Baskin has insisted she’s “never” spoken to Joe Exotic, as she said their feud in the ‘Tiger King’ documentary was created by producers.
CAROLE Baskin has “never” spoken to Joe Exotic. The 59-year-old star agreed to take part in Netflix documentary ‘Tiger King’ because she believed it would be an expose of the mistreatment of animals by private owners, but it mainly focused on the relationship between her and her rival, though she insisted the “feud” depicted on the show was created by producers.
She told The Observer newspaper: “At the end of it. I just sat there with my [current] husband, looking at each other, like: ‘What was that?’ Such a missed opportunity. Because there was so much they could have shown people about the egregious abuse that these animals suffer.
“Instead, they just glamourised this yahoo in Oklahoma, and tried to create a feud. I’ve never even spoken to Joe Exotic. I’ve seen him in person I think four times.”
And Carole admitted her life was a “living hell” for months after the programme aired because she kept receiving death threats.
She said: “My phone started ringing, and it rang every two minutes for three months straight.
“Every time I answered the phone, it was somebody screaming threats and saying they wanted to kill me, they wanted to kill my family, they wanted to kill the cats. Our lives were just a living hell for the first three months.”
When she watched the documentary series herself, Carole was just as hooked as the millions of viewers around the world.
She said: “It was like watching a dumpster fire, you just couldn’t turn away from it.
“It was just mesmerising that there could be this many crazy people doing so many wretched things to animals.”
And despite the sensationalism of the series, Carole is still hopeful it’s made a positive impact in a way it might not have done if it had just focused on the plight of the cats.
She said: “That is the silver lining to Tiger King: people are finally talking about the real issues.
“If they had done a documentary that showed all of the suffering and abuse of these big cats, I don’t know if people would have watched it, shared it the way they did.
“But at least this opened the door and once I got my foot in that door it’s like: ‘And now you’re going to hear about the cats!’ “
