John Cameron Mitchell On Removing the Mystique of Joe Exotic for Peacock’s ‘Joe vs. Carole’ [VIDEO]

When the pandemic first shut everything down in early 2020, the first show we all binged together was Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem & Madness. It was as if we all couldn’t tear our eyes away from something as equally batshit as a pandemic ravaging our world. That doc series scratched our reality television itch, and, whether you like it or not, Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin have now become part of our cultural lexicon.

Some audiences wondered why Peacock was revisiting the feud between these two big cat lovers, but they shouldn’t fear redundancy in this limited series. Joe vs. Carole isn’t Tiger King, and John Cameron Mitchell will make you think of Joe Exotic in an entirely new way.

Mitchell doesn’t forgive the things that Exotic did, but he taps into a humanity that the Netflix series didn’t go near. In Joe vs. Carole, Mitchell paints a portrait of a man who makes a promise to himself to be as gay as he feels, especially after Exotic’s lover died of HIV complications in 2001.

We see how Joe sees himself in terms of his showmanship, but we also see how he suffered tremendous pain in near silence. A major tragedy is how both Exotic and Baskin had the same goal, but they couldn’t get out of each other’s way.

Joe vs. Carole is streaming now on Peacock.