Myrtle Beach Safari owner featured in new Netflix true crime docuseries ‘Tiger King’
A new Netflix true crime documentary series is expected to portray a prominent Myrtle Beach area businessman as operating with cult-like tendencies.
“Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” a seven-episode series available to stream Friday, features Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, owner of Myrtle Beach Safari, according to its trailer.
Antle and his business, also called The Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.), have a huge social media following with videos of employees interacting closely with big cats, and it’s proven to be a popular tourist attraction for celebrities and athletes including Odell Beckham, Floyd Mayweather and WWE wrestling’s The Undertaker.
Antle told The Sun News Wednesday he suspects that notoriety is why he is featured so prominently in a trailer for the documentary that’s mostly about a different tiger exhibitor, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, who was recently sentenced to 22 years in prison for a murder-for-hire plot.
“So I think in some capacity, (the documentary makers) will be trying to legitimize a show by dragging in a couple other characters and saying animal people at large are bad in this way,” Antle said. “Tying us to it when we have, probably more than a billion views on social media, so that connection to our billion views and fans out there makes them have an advertising campaign that has merit.”
Antle said the series’ producers sent him about 12 minutes of interview clips featuring him that will be included in the documentary. He’s considering legal action against Netflix because they’re also using footage from a separate show about conserving wildlife, and he never signed any sort of contract allowing them to use his name, image and likeness.
A Netflix representative overseeing public relations for the series did not provide answers to The Sun News’ questions about the show, including Antle’s claims, prior to publication.
Operating a cult?
While Antle may not be the main subject of the documentary series, he does expect some disgruntled former employees to appear on screen, and he specifically mentioned one who has suggested he’s operating similar to a cult leader.
The Sun News spoke to that former employee, Barbara Fisher, last year after seeing her 2017 post about working at T.I.G.E.R.S. titled, “How to Make an Extremist,” that was published in the Iowa Informer.
In the commentary, Fisher, who worked there as a tiger trainer for eight years ending in 2007, describes the control Antle had over the employees, who were all required to live on the safari property.
“It was he who molded us, cutting away the undesirable bits and trying to shape what was left into something of value,” she wrote. “Soon all the fears and limits we arrived with reduced to little dormant seeds sleeping underneath the spreading tree that was fear of disappointing him.”
Fisher compares the group to an extremist terrorism group, isolated and constantly seeking the approval of a charismatic leader.
Antle said he thinks anyone that reads Fisher’s piece can clearly see she has “a highly distorted sense of reality.”
“If there was a cult going on in Myrtle Beach, I think it would have long ago exploded if such a thing existed,” he said, noting he’s been operating in the area for nearly 30 years.
Fisher, who now has a husband and three children, told The Sun News she thinks Antle is a complicated person who truly thinks what he’s doing is for the greater good, but he has no empathy and doesn’t care “if he has to sacrifice a few people or animals along the way.”
She recalls leaving on positive terms and not really thinking about it until seeing a 2015 Rolling Stone article about Antle and realizing how different his public persona was from the man she remembered.
“It was like a lightning bolt, eight years after I left, that this was some weird cult I was in,” Fisher said.
Fisher said it’s taken a long time to adjust to life outside the safari, recalling a moment where she was alone taking care of her kids and fell into a panic because she thought she’d make all wrong decisions as she was often accused of doing by Antle.
She also said she had difficulties learning to deal with free time because she was used to working as much as 17 hours a day, seven days a week with no days off for minimal pay.
Antle doesn’t dispute the hard work or long hours, even advising on his website that applicants for apprenticeships “must be able to dedicate this time without expectation of days off or vacation, including family weddings, graduations and religious holidays.”
“There are no part-time jobs here, only unpaid apprenticeships open to passionate, single vegetarians who are ready to shovel feces and haul raw meat for a few years while they watch and learn,” the website states.
Antle said there are 80 big cats on his compound, including more than 60 tigers, that require a very specific routine in order to build personal relationships with their handlers.
“You’re always there for them,” he said. “You’re there with that hand for their food, that bottle in their mouth, that pat on their back, and if you stop doing that, then you would place yourself and that animal at odds, putting them and yourself in danger.”
Joe Exotic
Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who referred to himself as the Tiger King, was a boisterous animal exhibitor in Oklahoma with a bleach blonde mullet and handlebar mustache. He was arrested in 2018 and found guilty of trying to hire someone on two separate occasions to murder a vocal animal rights activist in Florida.
Antle said his connection to Maldonado-Passage is only “peripheral,” giving him advice to better care for his animals when Joe Exotic ran a show at the Palace Theatre for a few months and once helping set up a food drop for his animals when they were on the verge of starving.
Maldonado-Passage, speaking to The Sun News last year via prison phone call while he was still awaiting sentencing, said a lot of people in the industry are jealous of Antle because of his success, but he liked him and appreciated the time Antle took to teach how to run a more successful business.
He also said Antle sent him several tiger cubs while he was operating in Oklahoma, though Antle disputed that assertion, telling The Sun News that he had originally sent them to a different exhibitor, who then sent them to Maldonado-Passage after suffering major facility damage from a tornado.
Animal rights criticism
The Netflix series will also feature Carole Baskin, the Florida animal rights activist who Maldonado-Passage tried to have murdered.
Baskin and her husband, who run an animal sanctuary called Big Cat Rescue near Tampa, have also been critical of Antle, running a website that chronicles every U.S. Department of Agriculture citation his facilities receive and accusing him of exploiting his animals.
Howard Baskin, her husband, told The Sun News that Antle is “the Bernie Madoff of exotic animal exhibitors,” using his wealth and popularity to get away with misdeeds in plain sight.
Antle noted that the Baskins and organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has also been critical of Myrtle Beach Safari, harass anyone that has anything to do with wildlife
He compared them to Al-Qaeda, arguing that both follow an ideology detached from the general public’s point of view, and they press that ideology with gimmicks and misinformation.
“People ask someone like (Baskin) or PETA for their opinion (about me), and it would be just like calling Al-Qaeda and asking them, ‘How do you feel about the Pentecostal church down the road?’,” Antle said.
As for the documentary, Antle said he expects it will spread a lot of misinformation about him and the wildlife ambassador industry in general, but he still plans on watching.
