Telly 31st March 2020 by Amie Edmonds

Surprise Surprise, Joe Exotic Is Delighted With His New-Found Tiger King Fame

Another day, another Tiger King story.

 

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Everyone, everyone is talking about Tiger King. The true-crime docu-series debuted on Netflix on March 20th, and has been the subject of many WhatsApp groups, Twitter memes, and even headlines. Following the story of Joe Exotic (exotic animal owner, on time presidential candidate and, ahem, country singer), Carole Baskin (animal rights activist and owner of a ‘big cat sanctuary’), as well as some supporting characters along the way.

Of course, if you’ve watched Tiger King, you can probably guess that Joe Exotic would be only delighted with his new-found fame, and you’d be 100% correct. According to The Los Angeles Times, Tiger King co-director Eric Goode has opened up about his conversations with Joe, “Joe has called me quite a few times over the last few days and weeks. One, he is absolutely ecstatic about the series and the idea of being famous. He’s absolutely thrilled. I think he is trying to be an advocate for — no surprise — criminal justice reform.”

Eric continued, “He is in a cage and of course he’s gonna say that he now recognizes what he did to these animals. With Joe, we have empathy for him, but at the same time, he’s someone who really knows what to say at the right moment. I take it with a big grain of salt when he says he is now apologetic for keeping animals.”

Rebecca Chaiklin, another co-director of Tiger King, has also been speaking to Joe during his time in prison. “You can hardly talk to [Joe Exotic] without him mentioning the amount of press he’s getting. He says people are asking to see his Prince Albert and girls are sending him sexy bikini pictures even though he’s gay. He’s over the moon. Having kept in pretty close touch with him while he’s been in a horrible county prison, this has raised his spirits. Joe definitely did some horrible things to his animals. He was very abusive to them and he shot five tigers, no question about it. But what has happened to him has also been hard.”

Well, we can’t at all say that we’re surprised that Joe is Baskin’ in his new-found fame – yes, pun intended.

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