Advertisement
UK markets close in 2 hours 32 minutes
  • FTSE 100

    7,725.62
    +3.07 (+0.04%)
     
  • FTSE 250

    19,403.32
    -83.21 (-0.43%)
     
  • AIM

    734.77
    -1.86 (-0.25%)
     
  • GBP/EUR

    1.1698
    -0.0006 (-0.05%)
     
  • GBP/USD

    1.2698
    -0.0031 (-0.24%)
     
  • Bitcoin GBP

    50,025.89
    -3,226.54 (-6.06%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • S&P 500

    5,137.35
    -12.07 (-0.23%)
     
  • DOW

    38,850.93
    +60.50 (+0.16%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    82.99
    +0.27 (+0.33%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,154.40
    -9.90 (-0.46%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,003.60
    +263.20 (+0.66%)
     
  • HANG SENG

    16,529.48
    -207.62 (-1.24%)
     
  • DAX

    17,952.47
    +19.79 (+0.11%)
     
  • CAC 40

    8,183.44
    +35.30 (+0.43%)
     

Carole Baskin Slams Tiger King as 'Reality Show Dumpster Fire' amid Season 2 News

Tiger King
Tiger King

Netflix Carole Baskin

Carole Baskin has offered another scathing review of Tiger King amid the news that the Netflix docuseries will drop a second season later this year.

Season 1 of Tiger King, which premiered on the streaming service in March 2020, captured the years-long feud between 60-year-old animal rights activist Baskin and Joseph "Joe Exotic" Maldonado-Passage, the now-imprisoned founder of an exotic animal park in Oklahoma. The show also touched on the disappearance of Baskin's late husband, Don Lewis — a millionaire and animal sanctuary owner.

Maldonado-Passage, 58, is currently serving a 22-year sentence in FMC Fort Worth in Texas for various crimes, including paying Allen Glover $3,000 to kill Baskin and for killing tigers to make room for more big cats at his park.

ADVERTISEMENT

Baskin slammed Maldonado-Passage as well as Rebecca Chaiklin, who directed Tiger King alongside Eric Goode, in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter regarding season 2.

"I don't know how they put out a Tiger King 2 when Joe Schreibvogel's [aka Joe Exotic] in jail and I'm refusing to be played again," she said. "Rebecca Chaiklin said she wanted to 'clear the air' about what they did to me in Tiger King. I told her to lose my number. There is no explanation for such a betrayal and false portrayal."

RELATED: Carole Baskin Cries as She Opens Up About the Aftermath of Tiger King: 'My Family Was Struggling'

Baskin also told Variety she thought a second season would take much longer to come about.

"I know some people who have been involved in it and they were doing more filming, so I assumed at some point they would come out with a Tiger King 2. It took them five years to put together the first one, so I thought it would be a lot longer," she said.

"I wouldn't call Eric Goode or Rebecca Chaiklin true documentarians. I mean that was just a reality show dumpster fire," she added of the hit series.

Baskin — who runs an exotic big-cat sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue, in Citrus Park, Florida — said she would watch the new show, but only to be able to tell the public "how they have been misled" by it.

"My phone started ringing off the hook for three months straight, people cursing at me and telling me that they wanted to burn the place to the ground and they wanted to kill me and my family and the cats," she recalled to the outlet of the season 1 aftermath. "So whatever Tiger King 2 does, I'll have that same reaction from the public that has been misled. I'll have to spend a lot of time explaining to them how they have been misled, which means I have to watch it."

carole baskin
carole baskin

Frank Ockenfels Carole Baskin

RELATED: Carole Baskin Says Tiger King Was 'a Total Assassination of My Character'

"I think there's a Mark Twain quote about a lie making its way around the world faster than the truth can get its pants on, and that's true because people just love a good lie," she said.

Baskin also recommended that interested fans watch the documentary, The Conservation Game, rather than Tiger King 2.

"If people want to know the actual truth behind the big cat crisis in the U.S. and how it all started, they should be demanding to see The Conservation Game film by Michael Webber," she said in an email to Variety. "His film answers the important questions that Tiger King glossed over."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Baskin previously condemned her portrayal on the Netflix series in an interview with PEOPLE back in September 2020, sharing "I am not at all the person I was portrayed in Tiger King."

"I am not the money-grubbing, gold-digging, murderous person that they portrayed. I am the type of person who will come after any person who is abusing animals. I am relentless. I just won't stop until I find some legal way to make it stop," she added at the time.