Carole Baskin Says ‘Tiger King’ Viewers Obsessed With Her Ex-Husband’s Disappearance ‘Missed The Point’

Carole Baskin spent months thinking she was filming a documentary about animal cruelty in the tiger industry, but in the end, she says that the Netflix series went viral for all the wrong reasons. Both she and her husband, Howard, say that they’re upset by their portrayal on the series, with its focus on her and her late husband, Don Lewis.

Baskin has now spoken for the first time since the series aired. In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, she talked about the hours of interviews and filming that she worked through, all the time thinking that the documentary would focus on the plight of the big cats and her work to help them.

Instead, the series brought her attention, but not for her work in the animal rights world. Instead, the series, which highlights the eccentric personalities of the people involved in the show, portrayed Baskin as another individual looking to exploit big cats to make money.

“I just feel so angry that people have totally missed the point,” she said. “And the point is these cubs are being abused and exploited and the public is enabling that.”

The series spent an entire episode focused on Baskin and the disappearance of her husband in 1997, implying at times that she could have killed him and fed him to the cats in the sanctuary. Local police say that she isn’t a suspect in his disappearance, but the show attempted to paint her as potentially being involved in foul play.

Howard Baskin says that he feels betrayed by their portrayal on the show.

“There’s almost no way to describe the intensity of the feeling of betrayal,” he said.

These days, Baskin says that her sanctuary and the couple have become a focus of fans and critics of the show in a way that she didn’t expect. While the sanctuary is closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, she says that she sees people outside the sanctuary gates multiple times a day. She has also seen drones flying over her home and has received death threats in the wake of the series airing.

Others working in the animal rights arena say that the show failed to portray the level of abuse in the big tiger trade. While the series covers some of the abuses by Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as Joe Exotic, a representative for PETA says things are even worse than they seem.

“Things are a lot worse than what was portrayed in the Netflix series,” Debbie Leahy said.

Joe’s niece has echoed that statement in recent days, saying that Joe is “100 times” worse than the series portrayed.