Filmmaker Louis Theroux has revealed that Tiger King star Joe Exotic was "preoccupied" with rival Carole Baskin when he met the zookeeper in 2011.
The long-running feud between Exotic and Baskin was brought to global attention in the seven-part Netflix series, which documented the events that led to Exotic being imprisoned for an alleged plot to murder Baskin.
Theroux spent a week with Exotic in 2011 for a BBC documentary, Louis Theroux: America's Most Dangerous Pets, and recalled his experience in a lengthy piece for The Sunday Times today.
"Joe's grudge against Carole preoccupied him when we filmed," he wrote. "He would rant about her, mentioning his belief that she'd had one of her husbands killed. Tiger King spends the best part of an episode digging into the allegation that Carole murdered - or arranged the murder of - the husband, before (allegedly) putting him through a meat grinder and feeding her to her animals; or possibly (in Joe's view) just throwing the body into the enclosure to be chomped up, bones and all.
"In the series, the allegation of her misdeeds is thrown together with Carole's various fashion crimes involving leopardprint. She moons around her refuge in slow motion and one draws the conclusion, perhaps unfairly, that whether or not she killed her husband there is something not quite right about someone who manages to mysteriously lose a husband and makes a living out of providing room and board for a relatively small number of rescued animals while wearing flower-child accoutrements in late middle age."
Meanwhile, another of Tiger King's key figures, Jeff Lowe, has claimed that Netflix is filming a bonus episode for release in the coming days.
