Despite reports that Joe Exotic has been diagnosed with COVID-19 in prison, a post on the Tiger King star's Facebook page late Thursday said that is not the case.
“Joe DOES NOT have the COVID-19 virus, he's in a 14-day quarantine because he was transferred from another facility,” the post stated.
More from Newsweek: Despite misinformation on the internet that the former zoo owner known as Joe Exotic actually has coronavirus, all we know so far is that he has been transferred to a federal medical centre and put in individual quarantine. This is due to people testing positive for the virus in a prison where the “Tiger King” has been held. This is according to Maldonado-Passage's husband Dillon Passage. Speaking to Andy Cohen on his show Radio Andy, Passage said: “We speak like three to five times every day, but [not] since he's been moved to this new facility—they are putting him on a COVID-19 isolation because of the previous jail he was at, there were cases.”
Meanwhile, after a clip surfaced this week of Joe complaining that as a white man, he can't say the N-word, one of the creators of Tiger King confirmed that she believes he's racist.
“Joe is a racist, I would say categorically. He said things when we were filming that were very unsettling,” co-director Eric Goode told the Hollywood Reporter.
Asked why left the directors chose not to include any of Joe's racist comments in their Netflix documentary, Goode said: “They didn't have a context in the story, but he has a lot to learn. I think most of it was ignorance and not having a lot of exposure, and I think he even evolved over the course of the time that we filmed.”
Co-director Rebecca Chaiklin added: “We had empathy for Joe, but Joe did a lot of horrible things. Joe committed some really serious crimes and Joe was not only cruel and inhumane to his animals, he was cruel to the people around him. I think it's very important for people to understand that Joe is an actor and he tells people what they want to hear. As much as we have some empathy for Joe and found Joe to be such an incredible character — this mullet-wearing country singer in Oklahoma — he did a lot of horrible things.”
