I am starting to feel sorry for Tiger King’s Carole Baskin. Sure, she may or may not have murdered her husband, shoved his body into a meat grinder, and fed it to her tigers. But somehow on a show full of unlikeable villains, she ended up being portrayed as the most unlikeable, even though the show’s denouement culminated in someone trying to take out a hit on her. Baskin has wisely chosen to distance herself from the show, but sadly that didn’t spare her from falling victim to a very embarrassing prank.
TMZ reports that Baskin finally gave a public post-Tiger King interview, agreeing to speak on camera with two producers for The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. Or, at least, that’s who she thought she was speaking with—apparently, the two “producers” were “YouTube pranksters” Archie Manners and Josh Pieters, who’ve managed to scam a bunch of celebrities and non-celebrities with, I guess, pranks. In fairness to Baskin, Manners and Pieters did a pretty elaborate job with this one, using actual clips of Fallon interviewing celebrities to trick Baskin into believing she was speaking with Fallon himself
Poor, sweet, possibly murderous Carole:
Probably, the big tipoff here is that Manners and Pieters “agreed” to Baskin’s stipulation that the interview focus on her work as CEO of Big Cat Rescue and her big cat rights advocacy, and not get into Tiger King. Surely, Fallon wouldn’t book her and not ask about her feud with Joe Exotic? Either way, once again, Carole’s been duped by the sweet art of editing.