Want Carole Baskin to talk about her husband? The fee is $299
For those of you who don’t know who Carole Baskin is, here’s a quick refresher. She was the intended murder victim of a plot by zoo operator Joe Exotic. At least that’s what the Netflix docudrama Tiger King tells us. The movie chronicled the feud between Exotic & Baskin, the CEO of Big Cat Rescue.
Some background
The reason they were foes was Joe Exotic’s involvement in illegal activities, specifically black marketing of animals. He was also arrested on charges of animal abuse at the zoo he worked at. Baskin riled him up by challenging his smug criminal life. She crusaded against the abuse he was inflicting on the poor animals.
Reportedly, Tiger King Joe Exotic had more than 200 big cats at his zoo in Oklahoma. If reports are right, he may have killed five tigers, sold baby lemurs, and forged paperwork to hide his tracks. The criminal affiliations & antics don’t end there. According to the court documents, he allegedly hired a hitman to kill Baskin for $3,000, as you may have guessed, to silence her crusade.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the mystery surrounding their feud was brought into the spotlight by the seven-part docuseries, and that it’s mainly responsible for Carole Baskin’s shot to fame. Now, she’s using this fame to make thousands of dollars on Cameo.
Putting that fame to good use
Cameo is a site & an app that connects celebrities to their fans. The registered users can pay celebrities to create customized messages or shoutout videos that can then be shared elsewhere on the internet. Baskin is charging $299 for this service, reportedly up from her previously quoted amount of $199 for a 30-second video message.
Baskin has an enviable profile, too. With an impeccable 5-star rating over 189 reviews, she’s setting some serious standards in this space. For reference, Kate Flannery of The Office fame charges $175. In fact, Carole Baskin is in the league of actress Debra Jo Rupp from That 70’s Show.
Baskin’s Cameo page reads, “You know me as “Tiger King” Joe Exotic’s intended murder victim but my real life’s work has been at Big Cat Rescue for a world where all wild cats live free. Please be a voice for cats: BigCatAct.com”.
Collecting the monies
Popular outlets have reported that she made around $20,000 on her very first day on Cameo. She has also shared that she’s responded to more than 600 requests so far. The math here tells us she’s made well over $100,000. Talk about Netflix dramas bringing in the monies.
Does she mean she’ll give us answers?
Only in our fanciful imagination. Don’t let this fool you into believing she’ll talk about…anything. She doesn’t want to talk about her husband’s disappearance. She was quoted as saying, “I decline their requests to say things that would make fun of my husband’s disappearance because that was such a tragic time in my life & in that of those who loved him.”
That’s fair. Her husband Jack “Don” Lewis had disappeared under mysterious circumstances back in 1997 & was never found. It’s still a sore subject for her, as per her claims. She was also dragged into a salacious & sensationalist narrative that claimed she fed her husband’s dead body to the big cats. If she wants to distance from those memories, she’s got all right to.
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Any questions about her dead husband are still off-limits. This is her sacred space & she’ll only let her love for cats & kittens preside over her virtual sanctuary.
