Appearing on Tiger King could cost Shaquille O’Neal business relationships.
Joe Exotic has received support from celebrities such as Cardi B and an outpouring support via viewers watching on Netflix and posting reactions on social media. Well support Joe is not a good thing if you are Shaquille O’Neal. The Big Aristotle as he is sometimes called makes a surprise appearance in Netflix’s new documentary series Tiger King, which tells the true story of Joe Exotic, an Oklahoma man who ran an exotic animal park and is currently in prison for a murder-for-hire scheme. Understandably, O’Neal is now distancing himself from Joe Exotic.
Shaq like many celebrities these days he took to his podcast, “The Big Podcast With Shaq” to address this issue. He addressed his appearance in the first episode of the series, in which he is seen holding two tiger cubs and later claiming to have “got two more.”
“So we go in there, and it’s a beautiful place, and the character that was there was Exotic Joe,” O’Neal began. “We’re there and I dropped some donations for the tigers’ foods and all that. We take pictures with [the] tigers. We went back a couple times. Then we go back another time and we found out that he’s involved with all the stuff, and then, actually, I stopped going.”
Shaq say he does not own any tigers himself. “I don’t harm tigers,” he said on the podcast. “I love tigers. I love white tigers. Do I put donations to these zoos to help these tigers out? I do it all the time. Do I own tigers personally at my house? No. But I love tigers. Listen, people are going to make their own opinions, but, again, I was just a visitor. I met this guy — not my friend. Don’t know him. Never had any business dealings with him, and I had no idea any of that stuff was going on.”