Louis Theroux shares his thoughts on 'Tiger King' star Joe Exotic

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By VT

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Netflix's hit docuseries, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, has been keeping many of us who are self-isolating entertained through this unprecedented time. From Joe Exotic's diss tracks to the question of whether Carole Baskin killed her husband, it's a rip-roaring ride through the underbelly of America's exotic animal owners.

But, acclaimed British documentary maker, Louis Theroux, got there first. Back in 2011, Theroux paid a visit to the GW Exotic Animal Park as part of his America's Most Dangerous Pets documentary. Now, nine years later, after the broadcast of Tiger King, Theroux has reflected on his time with Joe Exotic, who is currently incarcerated for two murder-for-hire charges, and a slew of wildlife offences.

Watch as OJ Simpson says there's "no doubt" that Tiger King star Carole Baskin killed her husband:

Taking to Twitter, the 49-year-old revealed that like us, he had been "marvelling at the weird twists, unexpected deaths and super-abundance of exotic megafauna".

"Just finished watching #TigerKingon #Netflix. I have a lot of thoughts which I'll post in a considered form in the next day or two," he captioned the post. 

And as promised, he documented his thoughts in a piece for The Times, where he recounted first meeting Exotic in May of 2011.

"What stood out, apart from the blonde mullet and the nervous energy, was the blue eyeliner tattooed on the rims under his eyes. He was a strange mix of butch and femme signifiers. He carried a gun, which never left his side, and handcuffs, but there were also the aforementioned piercings and an air of heightened emotion," Theroux wrote for the publication.

"Altogether, though, Joe struck me as likeable and friendly. I warmed to him, and his ridiculousness was endearing rather than annoying."

The filmmaker went onto note that he met Exotic just after a tornado hit a nearby town: "In the event, the tornado passed us by, but an atmosphere of incipient catastrophe never quite let up the whole time I was with Joe. He seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, constantly on the verge of financial ruin, handling low-level bites and maulings, and being hounded by “animal rights people”, as he put it.''

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Theroux also admitted that despite what went into running the zoo, "it was hard to dislike the man himself":

"Maybe because he seemed neither to be hiding many of his misdeeds nor to take himself too seriously, not to mention that his emotional volatility — laughter, tears, kindness, paranoia, all in quick succession — inclined me to be a little protective of him."

Overall, Theroux stated that he "greatly enjoyed the documentary", detailing that he had a "sense of envy and missed opportunity that I wasn’t involved in what has turned out to be a global smash."

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"I do recall that, having made our documentary, which came out as America’s Most Dangerous Pets, I felt there was probably some kind of longer-form series to be made about that world, though I had no idea Joe would end up caught up in a murder-for-hire case and I really can’t claim any kind of prescience other than noticing that it is pretty weird for Americans to be keeping multitudes of large exotic animals in small cages.

If I have a quibble with the series, or maybe just a cautionary note, it’s that the carnival of human folly it depicts should not blind us to the pressing, and less amusing, animal issues at its heart: playthings of a more powerful predator, kept in captivity because of human acquisitiveness, ostentation and control."