Saturday Night Live cast member Kate McKinnon leads the cast as Carole Baskin.
NBC Universal Television has ordered a multi-platform scripted series about the rivalry between Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, who both featured in the hit Netflix docu-series Tiger King.
The show isn’t to be confused with the rival Amazon TV production, which was set to star Nicolas Cage in the role of Joe Exotic, but was recently shelved.
In this NBC version, the narrative focus will be on Baskin, played by Saturday Night Live cast member Kate McKinnon, while John Cameron Mitchell will play exotic animal breeder Joe “Exotic” Schreibvogel.
Both real-life big cat enthusiasts clashed in the Netflix lockdown hit; the synopsis for the dramatisation reveals that fictional Baskin will learn her on-screen nemesis “is breeding and using his big cats for profit. She sets out to shut down his venture, inciting a quickly escalating rivalry”.
However, “Carole has a checkered past of her own and when the claws come out, Joe will stop at nothing to expose what he sees as her hypocrisy. The results prove dangerous”.
Read on for everything you need to know about Joe Exotic (working title).
Joe Exotic release date
Various castings were announced in June and July 2021, but it’s not yet been announced whether filming has begun on the series. We’ll keep this page updated with any news.
Joe Exotic cast
Saturday Night Live cast member Kate McKinnon (who also executive produces) plays Carole Baskin, while John Cameron Mitchell will play Joe “Exotic” Schreibvogel.
!["Tiger]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2020/03/tiger-king-396aa9c.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"Tiger")
Last year the real Baskin explained in the The Pet Show podcast with Dennis Quaid and Jimmy Jellinek from AudioUp that McKinnon had not yet “reached out” to her.
“I really hope that she does before she gets too far down the line with it,” she said. “I’d love to know what her take is on it and what she’s thinking to do and see if there was any way we could advise her. We reached out to her through the media — because I don’t have any way of contacting Kate McKinnon — but we had posted publicly that we really hope that her or anybody that does any kind of follow-up programming doesn’t end up hiring people that are exploiting and abusing cats. It’s like the worst thing you can do is abuse cats to show other people that you shouldn’t abuse cats.”
Kyle MacLachlan will play Carole’s husband, Howard Baskin, while Marlo Kelly (Dare Me) will play Carole’s daughter, Jamie Murdock.
William Fichtner (Mom) is cast as reality show producer Rick Kirkham (replacing Dennis Quaid, who was previously cast in the role but had to pull out due to a scheduling conflict).
Rounding out the cast is newcomer Lex Mayson, who will play Saff, Joe’s employee, who had their arm ripped off by a tiger during the series.
Joe Exotic trailer
There’s no trailer for Joe Exotic yet, but we’ll keep this page updated with any news.
If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV guide.