Infamous Tiger King sanctuary owner Carole Baskin was lured into an intriguing Zoom interview posted online by a pair of pranksters at the weekend, who led her to believe she was a remote guest on Jimmy Fallon’s US talk show.
The video – by British YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, who told Carole they were producers for Fallon’s show – is both intriguing and hilarious, with a breathless, over-the-top tabloid-esque narration.
“Like Tiger King, this is a story of loopholes, lawyers and lies,” Josh enthuses in the video recorded in his London home.
The pair tricked Carole by using recordings of Jimmy Fallon asking other celebrity guests past episodes of his show.
In the past, they have successfully pranked other high-profile characters. Earlier this year, they tricked right-wing British media personality Katie Hopkins into flying to Prague to collect a fake C**t award.
This time, they repeatedly reached out to Carole Baskin via emails (which they revealed in the video) from their production company Invisible Objects. But she and her current husband, attorney Howard Baskin, initially turned down the requests.
They complained that Netflix’s hit show Tiger King had indicated that Caroline was linked to the 1997 disappearance and presumed death (possibly murder) of her first husband, Don Lewis.
She finally agreed to the interview after Josh and Archie promised that questions would only focus on her work with animals and the sanctuary she runs.
Wearing a flower crown, Carole talked about the struggle caring for her sanctuary’s big cats during lockdown, and pitched a campaign for the bill the Big Cat Public Safety Act. She also shared videos and photographs. Check out the entire video at the top of this article.
Carole Baskin couldn’t immediately be reached by HuffPost for comment about the video. But a posted response to the video from Carole’s own YouTube account included a copy of what she said was an email she sent to her daughter and husband after the interview about how suspiciously “weird” it was.
“I couldn’t see Fallon during the interview, and when they had his voice on the questions, they didn’t sound like they were specific to the topic,” the comment noted. “He’d just say things they could have recorded from any other interview. They “didn’t really sound like it was live from him to me,” Carole wrote.
The “whole thing may have been a spoof,” she added.