A little over a year after Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness‘ release, a follow-up film about Joe Exotic unearths some new murder claims regarding Carole Baskin from 2011. The documentary about the now-infamous zoo owner from Oklahoma took the world by storm during the initial days of intense COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020. And it was certainly a sight to behold: The doc featured plenty of intriguing and amusing people, but Joe was the main draw. Most of the internet seemed to side with him in regard to his distaste for his nemesis, big cat rights activist Carole Baskin, and some of his more harmless antics were darkly funny.
Tiger King reviews the long feud between Exotic and Baskin. In his music video for the song “Here Kitty Kitty,” he uses a look-alike to imply that Carole killed her husband or had him killed years ago — a moment that truly captured the essence of irreverent, shock factor comedy. But, as everyone knows, Joe’s tendency to not only speak his mind, but openly make threatening jokes and remarks about the big cat sanctuary owner blew open when he was slapped with a 22-year prison sentence for murder for hire (along with other charges related to illegally killing animals and falsifying/tampering with wildlife records) in January 2020. And he’s been incarcerated since.
On April 5, 2021, a new, rather damning Joe Exotic-centered doc was released by BBC Two, which is entitled Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic. Theroux, who’s a British documentarian and investigative journalist, spent time filming Joe for his 2011 project America’s Most Dangerous Pets, which took a look at the legal big cat breeding scene in the United States. He’s since decided to release his extra footage, which he says to have gone over during the pandemic — but, apparently, there’s more than just wacky, Joe Exotic antics in what was filmed. At the end of March, Theroux told Metro.co.uk that, while going through the footage, he stumbled upon a “kind of seemingly veiled threat to do Carole harm.” Joe apparently talks about working with a Tampa, Florida hitman, and that either he or Carole is going down. This certainly doesn’t help the Tiger King’s case any, and just adds to the litany of documented threats he’s made towards Baskin over the years.
Theroux said, “I thought that was really odd, and then I had to listen to it a few times to really get exactly what he’s saying. He’s not saying, ‘I’m Joe, I’m gonna have Carole killed,’ he’s just suggesting that. So it’s both sort of everything and nothing in an odd way and I think more than anything, it sort of is a description of the fee bridal mindset that Joe was slipping into.” Since Joe has become such a notable figure in the past year, these unearthed claims will certainly continue to draw a large audience for the doc. Anything related to Tiger King is like a disaster that you can’t look away from.
But, at the same time, any publicity/monetary attempt connected to the show always runs the risk of coming across as a way to cash in on a pop culture phenomenon that’s already been in the public eye for a solid year. There was a similar vibe to Carole Baskin’s brief, post-Tiger King role on Dancing With the Stars; continuously piggybacking off of a crime-filled (yet glamorized and darkly funny) story that many people are already quite familiar with. Since Theroux already had the footage from the early 2010’s, and he’s the one who shot it, it’s not quite as grating as other attempts would be. Fans will tune in, and maybe, as Theroux says, the film can give even more of a glimpse into Joe’s mindset during his Baskin feud days. Still, it’s hard to believe any of this will come across as shocking news to anyone who’s familiar with the original doc.
