One of the biggest coups of Tiger King, the Netflix docuseries turned cultural phenomenon, was the participation of Rick Kirkham.
For a whole year, the former Inside Edition reporter—who’d worked with another “big asshole” (his words) in Bill O’Reilly—filmed a reality-show pilot centered on Joe Exotic and his Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. And then their entire production studio mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night, and with it, most of the footage Kirkham shot of Joe Exotic and his (mistreated, criminally underpaid) staffers.
But not all of it.
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Kirkham, 61, supplied plenty of his remaining footage to the makers of Tiger King, which is a big reason why the docuseries appears to have such rich, up-close-and-personal access to Joe Exotic and crew. Still, there’s some wild stuff that has yet to see the light of day.
We reached out to Kirkham who supplied us with the sizzle reel of his aborted reality show he filmed on Joe Exotic, titled Joe Exotic: Tiger King. In it, there’s fascinating (and terrifying) footage of staffers (and Joe) being mauled by tigers and lions as well as scenes of Joe mistreating his team, most of whom were paid only $100 a day—including firing them for having sexual relations with one another (staffers were forced to sign a document pledging they would not have sex with other staffers, despite Joe being a polygamist whose husbands worked at the G.W. Zoo) or not meeting his extraordinary demands.
You can watch the 7-minute clip here, courtesy of “Joe Exotic TV,” exclusively at The Daily Beast:
And for more from Rick Kirkham, including just how cruel and evil Joe Exotic was to both animals and people, and what he thinks of President Trump’s plans to potentially pardon Joe Exotic, you can check out our eye-opening feature interview with him tomorrow.
