Jeff Lowe, one of the subjects featured in Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, hosted a Reddit AMA on Wednesday, which ended up inspiring questions that were as unpredictable as the Netflix docuseries itself. As Entertainment Tonight noticed, Lowe seemed to be in good spirits about the ordeal and even tackled some of the stranger questions.
As documented in Tiger King, Lowe became involved with its subject, Joe Exotic, in 2015 when he became a financial partner for his roadside zoo in rural Oklahoma. Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, was in dire financial straights after an ongoing legal battle with Carole Baskin, which included charges of murder-for-hire. Since then, the two had a considerable falling out, to the point that Lowe now refers to his former partner as a “monster.” Of course, none of this was off the table, as far as the AMA participants were concerned.
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One response saw Lowe addressing the series itself, which he said was grossly misrepresented by its producers. “Netflix did not approach us,” Lowe explained. “We were produced by the guys who made the show. They framed it as an expose on Carole Baskin. And to Carole, they said it was warning against the dangers of keeping tigers. They misrepresented the show to everyone.”
Lowe’s remarks also echo what was said by Howard Baskin, who is Carole’s current husband. In an emotional video posted to YouTube on March 28, Baskin said the filmmakers approached them with the pitch that they wanted to make “the Blackfish of big cats in captivity,” a reference to the 2013 documentary that led to drastic changes within companies like SeaWorld.
Another question involved the conspiracy theory that Lowe was, in reality, Don Lewis, Baskin’s former husband who’s whereabouts are still unknown. Lowe called the person asking the question “a brilliant man” but clarified that Baskin “is not my type.” He went on to write that if he “was stuck on a deserted island with her, I would f— a coconut.”
Lowe also made it clear that even though the Tiger King producers misrepresented themselves, he did feel that the series went too easy on Baskin and her possible involvement with Lewis’ disappearance. “Joe had file cabinets full with info on the disappearance of Don,” Lowe explained. “All she does is she has big cats in cages, just like Joe.”
Still, there were a number of questions that Lowe himself didn’t quite get around to answering. Some of them included references to him as an “anthropomorphized can of Monster Energy” and inquiries about when Lowe will “be behind bars.”
