Search icon

Movies & TV

30th Mar 2020

The bizarre Tiger King story on Netflix barely scratches the surface

Rudi Kinsella

Tiger King

Somehow, Tiger King on Netflix doesn’t fully cover the bizarre story of Joe Exotic’s life.

By now, we reckon everyone, or at least of lot of you, have seen Tiger King, the bizarre story about Joe Exotic on Netflix.

What starts off as a story about the ownership and treatment of big cats in America turns into a story about drugs, romance and murder.

But somehow, even with everything that is covered in the seven-part documentary, a lot seems to have been left out.

In 2019, Journalist Robert Moor made a podcast about the infamous Joe Exotic and in that, and in a Twitter thread earlier this month, he revealed a number of extremely fascinating details that didn’t make the cut for Tiger King.

Firstly, and perhaps most depressingly, Joe did not write any of those bizarre country songs. He sings alongside the Clinton Johnson Band, but they are not his words, sadly.

He also claims that for a long time, Joe told everyone that he was dying from prostate and bone marrow cancer. He raised money from his Facebook fans for his expenses, but even Moor has his doubts with regards to the validity of that story.

Then we’ve got Carole Baskins. After her husband Don Lewis vanished, but before Carole married Howard, Moor claims that she dated a man named Jay Baykal.

In 2002, Baykal filed a restraining order against Carole, which includes some bizarre and suspicious-sounding details regarding Don Lewis’ disappearance.

Amongst the other things claimed by Moor about Tiger King is that Saff (the guy who loses his arm thanks to a tiger attack and who is literally the only person who is any way sound throughout the whole thing) is openly trans and is misgendered throughout the entirety of the documentary.

Take a look at Moor’s Twitter thread in full below, or check out his podcast about Joe Exotic here.

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge