JOE VS CAROLE - JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL'S TAKE ON JOE EXOTIC - OUR INTERVIEW
/Remember Tiger King mania at the height of the pandemic? Well get ready for the dramatized story of Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin in the new limited series, Joe Vs Carole.
Hey all you cool cats and kittens! The new limited series based on a true story, JOE vs CAROLE premieres Wednesday, March 23rd at 9 p.m. ET only on Showcase and will be available to stream live and on demand with STACKTV and the Global TV App.
Based on the Wondery podcast Joe Exotic: Tiger King, hosted and reported by Robert Moor, the limited series will centre on Carole Baskin, a big cat enthusiast, who learns that fellow exotic animal lover Joe "Exotic" Schreibvogel is breeding and using his big cats for profit. She sets out to shut down his venture, inciting a quickly escalating rivalry. But Carole has a checkered past of her own and when the claws come out, Joe will stop at nothing to expose what he sees as her hypocrisy. The results prove dangerous.
The series stars John Cameron Mitchell as Joe “Exotic” Schreibvogel, Kate McKinnon as Carole Baskin, Kyle MacLachlan as Howard Baskin, Brian Van Holt as John Reinke, Sam Keeley as John Finlay, Nat Wolff as Travis Maldonado, Marlo Kelly as Jamie Murdock, William Fichtner as Rick Kirkham, Dean Winters as Jeff Lowe, and David Wenham as Don Lewis.
According to Etan Frankel (series showrunner/writer/executive producer), “JOE vs CAROLE is a wild ride. It's a fun and rich journey into the story of people who live very extreme lives. When I took on this project a year and a half ago, I found Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin to be utterly fascinating, and this crazy tale about two big cat lovers quickly became an important story for me to tell. I hope that when people watch JOE vs CAROLE just maybe they'll see these people that they thought they knew in a brand-new way. We knew it would take two extraordinary actors to portray these larger-than-life people as the complex, three-dimensional individuals that they are. John Cameron Mitchell is one of the most gifted and thoughtful actors I've ever worked with. He cares so deeply about the work, and his performance is breathtaking. And Kate McKinnon is simply remarkable. She is able to make us double over with laughter one moment and then break our hearts the next. It was an absolute thrill to watch these two exceptional actors morph into these roles."
Showcase can be streamed live or on demand on the Global TV App, available now on iOS, Android, Chromecast and at watch.globaltv.com, and via STACKTV, available on Amazon Prime Video Channels. The network is also available through all major TV distributors, including Shaw, Shaw Direct, Rogers, Bell, Videotron, Telus, Cogeco, Eastlink and SaskTel.
I spoke with the multi-talented John Cameron Mitchell about the pressures of playing Joe Exotic, why he felt he related to him on some level and much more!