Carole Baskin says the ‘Tiger King’ docuseries was a "total assassination" of her character.
The Big Cat Rescue CEO became one of the most famous faces across the globe in 2020 due to the Netflix hit which focused on her feud with former G.W. Zoo owner Joe Exotic, who is currently serving 22 years in jail on two counts of hiring someone to murder Carole and multiple violations of animal welfare laws, including nine counts of breaking the Endangered Species Act by killing five tigers and for selling tigers across state lines.
Despite Joe’s criminal actions, viewers considered him an anti-hero, whilst Carole was branded a villain due to Joe losing his animal park as well as his freedom, and the rumours that were given screen time by the filmmakers about the mysterious disappearance of her second husband Don Lewis.
And now, Carole has insisted she is "not at all the person" she was portrayed to be in the documentary, as she is simply desperate to see animals free from harm.
She said: "I am not at all the person I was portrayed in ‘Tiger King’. I am not the money grubbing, gold-digging, murderous person that they portrayed.
"I am the type of person who will come after any person who is abusing animals. I am relentless. I just won’t stop until I find some legal way to make it stop. From that perspective, I think they got me right.
"Me as a person, that was a total assassination of my character for nothing other than whatever money they could get for selling that to Netflix."
Carole said she has been "dealing with death threats for decades", and slammed those who have threatened to "harm her family".
She added: "What the show doesn’t show is that I’ve been dealing with death threats and people attacking me for decades. All of these animal abusers know that I am leading the leading sanctuary against [them]. It’s been nothing for them to threaten to kill me or to harm my family."
Following the documentary, Carole is looking to clear her name by signing up for ‘Dancing with the Stars’, where she hopes to prove she "needed" the documentary in order to further her activism.
She told People magazine: "I believe that everything happens for a reason and everything happens exactly as it should. No matter how horrible something may seem, there is something that I may not see that is right on the other side that is going to prove that this is what I needed in order to get to this next place."