Carole Baskin Tricked Into Giving First Major TV Interview Since ‘Tiger King,’ Says ‘I Was Suspicious’
Carole Baskin gave her first major interview since the Netflix series, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, hit televisions across the country. While the big cat advocate thought she was speaking with Jimmy Fallon, it turned out that she was actually chatting with two YouTubers who tricked her into spilling details about her experience filming the show.
As Business Insider reports, Josh Pieters and Archie Manners reached out to Baskin to see if they could trick her into appearing in their video. Pieters conducted the interview, while Manners acted as a producer. They played clips of old television episodes of Jimmy Fallon’s show, The Tonight Show.
With so many interviews taking place remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic, the two saw an opportunity to trick celebrities into conducting interviews.
3 nights. 2 boys. 1 mission. @archiemanners . First video out tonight. pic.twitter.com/C044IWbqvj
— Josh Pieters (@joshua_pieters) May 1, 2020
“Here’s a chance where we could perhaps interview some high level talent because we are going under the guise of being a really famous show,” Pieters said. “And we thought, why don’t we take a shot in the dark and go for the most exclusive, hard to reach person in the world, with absolutely no hope of it working?”
To their surprise, Baskin agreed. They compiled a bunch of clips of Fallon talking about cats in order to prepare for their interview.
Baskin opened up about the challenges they’ve been facing at her big cat rescue in Citrus Park, Florida. She told them that she has been forced to lay off half her staff since they can no longer allow people to visit the park. She also talked about her choice of headwear — a type of lei — and urged people not to pay to see tiger cubs.
Since the news of the fake interview hit the media outlets, Baskin opened up about being tricked into giving an interview.
“I was suspicious as we were doing it because the questions appeared taped. But had no idea it would turn out to be such a fun prank. It gave us a very welcome good laugh. I appreciate their cleverness and that they created their video in a way that I don’t feel was in any way mean-spirited,” she told Us Weekly magazine.
In the past, Baskin has said that she was upset with the way she was portrayed on the show, which spent an entire episode focused on the disappearance of her husband. She says that people who are focused on finding out what happened to her late husband missed the point.
