Carole Baskin Will Absolutely Be Watching Joe vs. Carole

After Tiger King blew up in March 2020, studios rushed to produce spinoffs and adaptations of the story. The latest project to come out of that time period is Peacock’s scripted drama Joe vs. Carole, a limited series based on the second season of reporter Robert Moor’s Wondery podcast Over My Dead Body. The show features Kate McKinnon as Carole Baskin, who sets out to shut down Joe Exotic’s (John Cameron Mitchell) for-profit big cat zoo as their rivalry intensifies.

Carole Baskin has been notably vocal about her disdain for most of the shows produced about her, noting that Tiger King painted her as a villain. “I wouldn’t call [creators] Eric Goode or Rebecca Chaiklin true documentarians. I mean that was just a reality show dumpster fire,” she said of the series in 2021. After Season 1, she told Netflix to “lose [her] number” because the final version of Tiger King was “not at all” like the “big cat version of Blackfish” she claimed to have been promised. Instead, most of the show focused on Exotic’s personal life and his persistent theory that Baskin killed her husband, Don Lewis, who mysteriously vanished in 1997 and was later presumed dead. (Baskin has adamantly denied having anything to do with Lewis’ disappearance).

When Tiger King 2 came out in 2021, Baskin sued Netflix, claiming that she never agreed to appear in future projects. (Netflix disputed this, and Baskin withdrew her complaint on Dec. 3, 2021.)

However, Baskin seems to be much more OK with Joe vs. Carole’s depiction of her — likely because it’s fictionalized and doesn’t use any real footage of her. “My husband and I look forward to seeing Kate McKinnon and Kyle McLaughlin’s portrayal of us, even though we expect it will be a parody based on the trailer,” she said in a statement to Metro UK. “Both are talented actors and I expect Joe vs. Carole will be a lot more entertaining than the situation was in real life.”

Still, she added that Joe vs. Carole misses the point of why she ever got involved with Tiger King to begin with. “None of these programs created for entertainment value really get at the main issues of big cat and cub abuse and the imminent extinction of big cats due to cub petting,” she explained. “My fear is that in the next five years, while people are morbidly obsessed the plight of my former husband, Don Lewis, we will have reached the point of no return for the planet by failing to safeguard the world’s most iconic species.”