Carole Baskin Calls ‘Tiger King’ “Salacious” and Addresses Don’s Disappearance

Carole baskin tiger king
Courtesy of Netflix

The documentary that we simply cannot believe, or get enough of, is Netflix’s Tiger King. The show throws viewers into the wild world of big cat sanctuaries and breeding, and into the insane details of Joe Exotic’s life while running G.W. Zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. It also goes into Joe’s murder-for-hire plot he planned for Big Cat Rescue owner Carole Baskin, which he was convicted of in 2019. The details surrounding the disappearance of Baskin’s husband, Don Lewis, were also discussed throughout Tiger King, resulting in social media posts and memes from people believing she killed Lewis, and perhaps even fed him to her tigers. She has now posted a detailed blog post refuting the documentary as “salacious and sensational,” and gives details surrounding her husband’s disappearance.

She opens her blog post, which you can read in full here, by saying:

“There are not words for how disappointing it is to see that the series not only does not do any of that, but has had the sole goal of being as salacious and sensational as possible to draw viewers. As part of that, it has a segment devoted to suggesting, with lies and innuendos from people who are not credible, that I had a role in the disappearance of my husband Don in 1997. The series presents this without any regard for the truth or in most cases even giving me an opportunity before publication to rebut the absurd claims. They did not care about truth. The unsavory lies are better for getting viewers.”

Baskin breaks down the time leading up to Lewis’s death, including signs of mental deterioration, his supposed wealth, and potential motives behind those who spoke out via interviews. And, yes, she even addresses the infamous meat grinder:

“This is the most ludicrous of all the lies. As Gladys and the daughters did everything they could to make life difficult for me after Don disappeared, they spread this rumor that they thought I had ground Don up and fed him to the cats. And the media loved it. The meat grinder shown in the video was enormous. Our meat grinder was one of those little tabletop, hand crank things, like you’d have in your kitchen at home… Meat had to first be cut into one-inch cubes like you see here to go through it. The idea that a human body and skeleton could be put through it is idiotic. But the Netflix directors did not care. They just showed a bigger grinder.”

She also claims that the Tiger King filmmakers told her they intended to make a “big cat version of Blackfish,” exposing issues surrounding big cat breeding and cub exploitation.

The producers of Tiger King talked with L.A. Times about these claims. Co-producer Eric Goode says, “Carole talked about her personal life, her childhood, abuse from her first and second husband, the disappearance of her ex, Don Lewis. She knew that this was not just about… it’s not a ‘Blackfish’ because of the things she spoke about.

She certainly wasn’t coerced. The other thing I would say about all these people is that there was a lack of intellectual curiosity to really go and understand or even see these animals in the wild. Certainly, Carole really had no interest in seeing an animal in the wild… The lack of education, frankly, was really interesting — how they had built their own little utopias and really were only interested in that world and the rules they had created.”

Co-producer Rebecca Chaiklin also addressed these claims, saying, “I would just say we were completely forthright with the characters. With any project that goes on for five years, things evolve and change, and we followed it as any good storyteller does. We could have never known when we started this project that it was going to land where it did.”

They also confirm that they are in touch with Joe Exotic, who is currently in prison. As no surprise to anyone who has seen the doc, Chaiklin says, “You can hardly talk to him 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.”

Tiger King is now available to stream on Netflix.


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