Doc Antle Airs Further Grievances With Netflix’s ‘Tiger King’
Written by SOURCE on March 30, 2020
Just days after Tiger King hit Netflix and became the No. 1 show for self-quarantiners to stream, two of the three main subjects from the show publicly aired their grievances with how they were portrayed by the series’ filmmakers.
Specifically, private zoo owner Bhagavan “Doc” Antle didn’t care for the way those filmmakers made it look like he was running a cult, complete with his own harem. And for whatever reason, Big Cat Rescue’s Carole Baskin also seemed upset that it was implied she killed her ex-husband and fed him to tigers.
Last week both of those two put up posts in an effort to refute the way they were represented on the show. Baskin did so from her own website. And Antle did so on social media in a post that appears to have since been taken down.
On Monday, Antle elaborated on his criticisms by talking to Theo Von during a taping of that comedian’s podcast.
As transcribed by HotNewHipHop, Antle (once again) refuted the suggested notions about his love life. His answer seemed to focus on the fact that he hasn’t had sex with every woman shown on his property in the documentary’s footage, and also that he didn’t start grooming employees in their teens.
“I’m a single guy…I was married 25 years ago. But I’m a single guy, I got girlfriends. They’ve come and gone over the years. It can’t be unique that I got girlfriends, it’s just they were put on a screen saying this and that,” Antle said.
He added that some of the women within his property’s proximity in the series are “relatives” or “significant others of my staff and stuff helping me out.”
He continued by saying that, “These aren’t teenagers that are walking around here, granted, some of them have been here for decades.”
Antle also answered the hinted-at-but-unconfirmed rumor that he euthanized tigers after they got too old to make a profit off of. “They asked me every question in the world,” Antle claimed. “99% of them had nothing to do with anything that was going to become Tiger King, they just pick and choose pieces.”
He further said that “No tiger babies are ever going to be euthanized or pushed out of the way, they’re incredibly special to us.”
He seemed to say that he’s considering taking legal action against the filmmakers, telling Von that “I’ve been advised not to talk about them, if it gets to litigation.”
You can watch that interview below:
Antle’s gripes with the show were not the only headlines he made on Monday, as eagle-eyed sleuths realized that he was the caretaker (is that the right word?) of the tiger that appeared onstage with Britney Spears during her “I’m a Slave 4 U” performance at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
See, here he is in a cage with her:
This is not super surprising given that Antle states in the documentary that he lent out animals to Hollywood productions that included the Ace Ventura movies and The Jungle Book.
Well, it’s not super surprising once you watch the docu-series in full. Prior to that you (like me) might’ve assumed the animal handlers for such large-scale productions were maybe a little more outwardly put together.
This Antle/Spears connection got other (potentially less competent but probably joking) sleuths to identify Carole Baskin sitting next to Spears at the VMAs show that took place in 2002.
But that identification turned out to be false. That really wouldn’t have made a lot of sense.
