After Tiger King became a runaway success at the onset of the pandemic, the true-crime story within became one of the hottest subjects in Hollywood. Studios seemed to be green-lighting adjacent projects left and right, including executives at NBC. The network managed to land SNL mainstay Kate McKinnon as their Carole Baskin in a fictional series based on the docuseries.
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We recently caught up with Baskin herself in support of this weekend’s Virtual Influence Summit, and the activist jokes with us she would have maybe cast someone a bit older to play herself.
“I’m honored that they would pick somebody so beautiful and so talented, but they’re going to have to put a lot of makeup on that young woman to make her look like a 60-year-old lady,” Baskin tells us.
That’s when she expresses relief that she’s heard the fictional takes on the situation will be more truthful to her situation.
“I am happy about the fact that everything that I have read so far says that they’re going to follow the same narratives that was in the Wondery podcast because in the Wondery podcast at the end, they said, ‘But here’s the truth,’” she adds. “And they actually felt the truth, whereas Tiger King just never got to that part. So I’m hoping that that will be the case with whatever they do with that piece.”
In the same conversation, Baskin revealed she had to hire security shortly after Tiger King was released due to threats made against her and Big Cat Rescue across social media after Tiger King first premiered. She admits she does have a slight concern that some of that will resurface once these fictional projects eventually come to life.
“Of course there is the concern,” Baskin tells us .”Because Tiger King was so popular and so financially lucrative to everybody involved, I am worried that people won’t care about what the truth is and will be more motivated by fame and by finances to just duplicate what worked before.”
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness is now streaming on Netflix.
Cover photo by Kelsey McNeal/ABC and Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
