Brandy McDonnell|Oklahoman
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"Tiger King" co-director Rebecca Chaiklin always knew she and her colleagues were stopping in the middle of Joe Exotic's story.
"It was quite a journey. ... It was baffling. It became a series because it never ended. It never ended with them," Chaiklin told The Oklahoman in a 2020 interview.
"I think that this is a story that's continuing to unfold. Whether or not Eric (Goode, the series' co-director) and I will be the storytellers on that — or anybody will — I can't say."
Having caught the proverbial tiger by the tail, though, Goode and Chaiklin didn't let go. They delved back into themind-boggling rural Oklahoma saga packed with, as the Netflix docuseries' subtitle promised, "Murder, Mayhem and Madness."
The pair are the co-directors of "Tiger King 2," which debuted Nov. 17 on Netflix.With the five-episode follow-up to last year's Emmy-nominated smash series, the streamer promises "newfound revelations emerge on the motivations, backstories,and secrets of America’s most notorious big cat owners."
Sequel continues saga that became a phenomenon
Debuting in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began confining many people to their homes, "Tiger King" quickly roared into a pop-culture phenomenon. The seven-episode true-crime drama reached a U.S. TV audience of 34.3 unique viewers within the first 10 days of its release, Variety reported, while a streak of "Tiger King" memes, send-ups and spin-offs quickly pounced on the docuseries' popularity. The original series was nominated for six Emmy Awards, although it didn't win any.
"I think the series is a well-told story. I think it's a fascinating story," Chaiklin told The Oklahoman just weeks after the initial "Tiger King" became a streaming sensation.
"We kept filming and it was a crazy ... and it was unfolding the whole time while we were trying to edit and get to delivery dates and all of that. ... Therewas nothing ever straightforward about this."
The initial "Tiger King" chronicled the bizarre life and murder-for-hire trial of Joe Exotic, the flamboyant former Oklahoma roadside zoo operator, big-cat breeder and gubernatorial and presidential candidate who was convicted in 2019 of twice hiring someone to kill his nemesis, Carole Baskin, a Florida animal sanctuary operator whose nonprofit organization successfully sued him for more than $1 million for trademark infringement and other civil wrongs.
Along with the peculiarly charismatic Joe Exotic — whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage — the original series featured Jeff Lowe, the slippery businessman and hard-partying swinger who promised to bail out Joe Exotic financially but then becamehis second most-hated rival; Joe Exotic's idol, Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, overseer of an upscale North Carolina wildlife preserve who was married to several comely female animal handlers in his employ; and tiger owner and strip club operator James Garretson, who emerged as a confidential informant for the government in the federal case against Joe Exotic.
"It was immediately apparent that this world was a super-colorful world. It was a world that most people didn't know about because it's quite secretive and hidden, and it had incredible characters in it. But we also wanted to do something that really raised people's awareness about the fact that there was a lot of cruelty to the animals going on," Chaiklin said.
"Of course, this whole true crime element with Joe and Jeff and James and how that all unfolded — and what had actually unfolded — we never in a million years thought it was going to take this whole true-crime twist. It was just never in the cards when we started out. So, there were a lot of unexpected turns in this process."
'Tiger King 2' includes updates and origin stories
Goode, Chaiklin and their "Tiger King" team spent five years exploring of the shadowy world of big-cat owners, with much of their filming centered on the rural Wynnewood roadside zoo Joe Exotic founded asG.W. Exotic Animal Park.
But their initial docuseries was just scratching the surface.
"We were locking picture while we were still filming," Chaiklin recalled. "We filmed the sentencing (of Joe Exotic), and it didn't make it in because we had locked picture and we just couldn't open it up again."
Even with Joe Exotic behind bars and some of the original series' participants having protested how they were portrayed in "Tiger King" —Baskin and husband Howard Baskin even sued Netflix over using footage of them in the sequel — there were still plenty of dramatic twists and turns for the follow-up.
"Tiger King 2" delves into Joe Exotic's childhood and young adult years, as well as his supporters' ultimately failed campaign to convince former President Donald Trump to pardon him.
In the 18 months since the original "Tiger King" aired, Maldonado-Passage's 22-year sentence has been thrown out as the10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that he must be resentenced because his trial judge made a mistake. Thethree-judge panel upheld his conviction, though.
Joe Exotic also posted recently on social media that doctors had diagnosed him withprostate cancer, and Chaiklin told The Oklahoman last year she worried whether he was receiving proper medical care in prison.
"I've kept in pretty close touch with Joe. And as complicated a character as he is, he was subjected to some pretty horrific conditions," she said. "He has a lot of health issues, and so I had a lot of deep concerns. ... I think that he did some really horrible things (but) no human being should be subjected to that."
Plus, the sequel further explores the 1997 disappearance of Baskin's second husband, Don Lewis.
Chaiklin said the topic of Lewis' disappearance was an unexpected development during the making of the original "Tiger King" — and the storyline became the focus of worldwide fascination, as well as the crux of Baskin's criticism of the initial series.
"I think we started feeling that Carole Baskin had a lot of the right messaging, and then as we were filming with her, all these issues kept coming up around her background. And we began to do some research ... and we suddenly were like, 'God, we're going to be really remiss as storytellers if we don't investigate this a little bit more.' And then as we investigated, we were like, 'What?' That was a shocking turn," Chaiklin said in 2020.
After 'Tiger King,' some big-cat owners face legal consequences
After a judge granted Baskin control of Joe Exotic's former zoo in Wynnewood, new owner Lowe and his wife, Lauren, moved several animals to a new locationin Thackerville called Tiger King Park.But that zoo was quickly dethroned, with federal agents seizing 68 big cats from it in May after inspectors found the animals were receiving inadequate care.
Since "Tiger King's" release, Antle was indicted in October 2020 on charges stemming from his alleged involvement in trafficking lions. Tim Stark, another big-cat owner depicted in the first series and the sequel, has been accused of abusing or fraudulently obtaining animals, experienced multiple run-ins with the law and barred from owning exotic animals.
While the initial success of "Tiger King" led to Lowe boasting of big attendance numbers atthe Wynnewood zoo Joe Exotic founded, Chaiklin said she hoped it would change people's attitudes about roadside zoos.
"I do think that people's consciousness is shifting ... so I think you're going to see a lot tighter restrictions around it," she predicted in 2020.
"So, yes, I do think there will be a lot happening ... in the years to come."
