‘My life isn’t done yet’: Carole Baskin refuses to sign life rights away for Joe Exotic drama starring Kate McKinnon

Tiger King’s Carole Baskin has revealed she was asked to sign her life’s rights away for a scripted series starring Kate McKinnon, and she refused.

We were first introduced to Carole, the owner of Big Cat Rescue, in the Netflix docu-series Tiger King, which followed the surreal exploits of Joe Exotic, a zookeeper of exotic animals.

In March last year, it was announced that Kate had been cast as Carole and Hedwig and the Angry Inch star John Cameron Mitchell as Joe in a Peacock limited TV series, with the working title Joe Exotic.

The programme will be based on the Wondery Podcast of the same name, focusing on the highly-publicised feud between Carole and Joe.

In an exclusive interview with Metro.co.uk, the conservationist said she was contacted by creators when discussions around the show first started.

‘The people at Wondery came out to me and said they’re going to do a scripted series with Kate McKinnon and they asked me if I’d sign over my life’s rights to it,’ she revealed.

‘I said, “No, my life isn’t done yet, when I get done, when I fix this problem, then maybe I’ll sign my life rights over but not until then.”

‘I didn’t hear much more about it till many months later when everyone else did.’

The problem she speaks of is the backlash she received for her negative portrayal in the series.

Carole and her family received hateful messages for months – at one point the 59-year-old’s phone was ringing every two minutes.

‘The first three months were the worst and it took me that look to figure out how to even cope with it, there were so many people that were attacking our social sites and harassing everyone involved with the sanctuary,’ she explained.

‘[They were] calling our vets, threatening them and threatening their children. Once I got a grip on it I was like “OK, how do I come back from that?” So I watched Tiger King seven times and went through the underlying truth of what was really going on on my website.’

Carole said that if the scripted show follows the same storyline as the Wondery Podcast, she’ll be happy, as she says Tiger King never got to the truth.

The conservationist added that the Tiger King docu-series could have done the same and it still would have been compelling.

She said: ‘They could have done what Wondery did and shown all of these crazy people and all of the wickedly awful things that they do to each other without assassinating my character.

‘I don’t know how that added to the dialogue except for the fact that they had to have some reason for there to be a feud between me and Joe Exotic,’ she said.

‘I have never spoken to Joe, so if you don’t have a real feud what can you do for real balance? There has to be some reason for him to be so obsessed with me.

‘That was the whole purpose of making me out to be this horrible villain.’

Metro.co.uk has contacted Peacock for comment.

Tiger King can be streamed on Netflix.

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