You didn’t forget about Tiger King, did you? The wildly popular seven-episode Netflix series captured viewers’ attention back in those early pandemic days of 2020. As soon as it scored big, plenty of spin-offs and remakes and sequels and specials were announced. One of the most notable, Joe vs. Carole, stars Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon as Joe Exotic’s nemesis, Carole Baskin, with John Cameron Mitchell as Joe himself. On Friday, Peacock dropped the first teaser from the series.
The teaser’s short, and it doesn’t reveal too much. But the Joe Exotic-Carole Baskin feud is pretty well-known at this point. Baskin owns Big Cat Rescue, a Florida nonprofit animal sanctuary, and Joe (real name: Joseph Maldonado-Passage) used to own an exotic-animal park in Oklahoma. He’s now serving a 22-year prison sentence for animal abuse and attempting to hire someone to kill Baskin. Baskin herself has a complicated past, too. Her second husband, Don Lewis, disappeared in 1997, never to be found.
It remains to be seen if everyone is so over the Tiger King phenomenon — this year, follow-up documentary Tiger King 2 came and went with none of the buzz of the first series — but it’s fun seeing McKinnon and Mitchell chewing the scenery, tiger-style. There’s no way anything based on the lurid events of Tiger King is going to be subtle, so prepare to sit back and enjoy these two magnetic actors going at it. The series comes to Peacock on March 3.
