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Tiger King's Carole "never had a conversation" with Joe Exotic

Photo credit: ITV
Photo credit: ITV

From Digital Spy

Tiger King's Carole Baskin has been opening up about the reality of her feud with Joe Exotic.

For those who've been snoozing under a rock for the past nine months, Tiger King is a hit Netflix docu-series centred on the eccentric big cat lover Joe, whose reported rivalry with fellow conservationist Carole takes up a large chunk of the action.

However, during her stint on today's (December 4) edition of Loose Women, the star suggested this reading of their relationship was baseless and that to this day, she's "never" actually had a conversation with Exotic and didn't "trash-talk" him.

Photo credit: ITV
Photo credit: ITV

Related: How Netflix's Tiger King utterly fails as a documentary

"Joe and I never had a conversation... we still have never had a conversation," laughed Carole.

"So if they were selling the idea of it being this big feud; they had plenty of Joe trash-talking me, but they couldn't get me to trash-talk him.

"And every time the producers would try, I kept going back to, you know, 'He's just one of these people who's abusing animals, this is a whole industry and there's a bigger picture'."

Photo credit: Netflix
Photo credit: Netflix

Related: Tiger King star Carole Baskin answers whether she will appear in season 2

According to Carole, instead of badmouthing Joe, she tried to keep the filmmakers "focussed on what was the important part of this, which is ending the cub-handling which drives all this breeding and discarding of big cats.

"I never say anything nasty about him personally," Carole pointed out. "I never did on social media or emails or in any way."

Exotic was convicted of 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of murder-for-hire and in January 2019, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is streaming on Netflix, while Loose Women airs weekdays on ITV.


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