Louis Theroux admits he found it ‘hard to dislike’ Tiger King star Joe Exotic while filming documentary in 2018 – but says his obsession with arch-rival Carole Baskin ‘preoccupied’ him even then
- Louis, , met Joe, , filming 2018 documentary Louis Theroux Dangerous Pets
- Has now revealed how he ‘found it hard to dislike’ the Tiger King star at the time
- Joe has had a long-running feud with fellow cat enthusiast Carole Baskin
- Film maker claimed his ‘grudge against Carole preoccupied him’ as they filmed
Published: : (BST, April 5) | Updated: : (BST, April 5)
Louis Theroux has admitted he found it ‘hard to dislike’ Tiger King star Joe Exotic when they filmed a documentary together nearly ten years ago. The British filmmaker, , met Joe while making 2011 documentary Louis Theroux Dangerous Pets and says his ‘grudge’ against arch -rival Carole Baskin ‘preoccupied him’ even then.
Big cat breeder Joe, born Joseph Maldonado-Passage – is currently serving 36 years for 19 counts of animal abuse and a murder-for-hire plot of Carole, a big-cat campaigner from Tampa, (Florida ). But despite Joe’s long-running feud with his rival, Louis told The Sunday Times he had ‘no idea’ the big cat breeder would be involved in a murder-for hire case, and simply thought he was ‘pretty weird’.
Louis revealed: ‘It was hard to dislike the man himself, maybe because he seemed neither to be hiding many of his misdeeds nor to take himself too seriously. ‘
And the British filmmaker revealed that even back then, Joe was obsessed with Carole even when filming his own documentary. He said: ‘Joe’s grudge against Carole preoccupied him when we filmed. He would rant about her, mentioning his belief that she’d had one of her husbands killed. ‘
But despite the on-going feud and Joe’s quirky personality, Louis said he never could have predicted that he would end up being caught up in the murder-for-hire case.
He then had a three-way wedding with Travis Moldonado and John Finlay in , but in 2018, a then 36 – year-old Moldonado died after authorities say he accidentally fatally shot himself in the head.
His final marriage was to Dillon Passage in December , with the duo together when Joe was arrest in .
‘I’m done with the Carole Baskin saga,’ he said in the interview with Netflix. ‘It’s now time to turn the tables and Joe gets out of jail a free man and exonerated from all these charges.’ according to Joe’s fourth husband, Passage, Exotic was being held in isolation at the Grady County Jail in Chickasha, Oklahoma due to his previous jail having had COVID – 728 cases.
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