When Netflix’s Tiger King blew up in March, the show’s stars scrambled to give interviews with anyone who’d listen. All except Carole Baskin.
Now she’s given her first public interview since the docuseries aired, and it was all because two YouTubers pranked her into thinking they were producers for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Josh Pieters and Archie Manners came up with a plan to download clips from actual Jimmy Fallon interviews and put them into a soundboard on their iPad. They then reached out for a chat.
“She said no, because the Tiger Queen hates Tiger King for making suggestions she was involved in her husband’s disappearance,” Pieters said.
“So we emailed her again saying we wouldn’t talk about Tiger King, which was fine for us because we couldn’t make Jimmy Fallon talk about Tiger King.
“We said we’d just talk about cats.”
It turns out Fallon has interviewed Kat Dennings, the stars of the movie Cats, and Bob Irwin holding a cat, all of which were very useful as soundbite fodder.
While there was nothing groundbreaking in the interview, we did learn a few tidbits about how Big Cat Rescue is coping during the pandemic.
“We have so many cats depending on us, we don’t have a choice in the situation,” Baskin said.
She said they’ve stockpiled around 9,000 kilos of frozen meat and still have volunteers on hand to look after the animals every day.
“After COVID-19 I just don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to do tours again,” she added.
The fact this stunt was pulled off so smoothly shouldn’t come as a surprise – these are the same guys who literally flew professional racist Katie Hopkins to Prague as part of an elaborate prank to get her to pose in front of a sign reading C. U. N. T.
The boys have form.
