Matt Taven Visited Tiger King Zoo with Jay Lethal and Dalton Castle, Says They Were Thought to Be Spies

Matt Taven has watched Tiger King like much of the Netflix-viewing world, and he recalled visiting Joe Exotic’s zoo during a recent interview. Taven spoke with ESPN West and when discussing what he was watching during quarantine, mentioned Tiger King and remembered that he, Jay Lethal, and Dalton Castle visited the zoo one and were viewed suspiciously because Lethal said he was from Tampa where Exotic’s now-infamous rival Carol Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue is.

Highlights and the full interview are below:

On visiting the zoo: “So I watched Tiger King like everybody else. And so, funny story: me, Jay Lethal, Dalton Castle actually went to Joe Exotic’s zoo … Yeah, we did. We had a show in Texas, and the next day we were in Oklahoma City. And on that drive you see nothing but billboards saying like, ‘240 exotic tigers!’ And then all of a sudden you see a billboard with Joe Exotic on it and you’re like, ‘I’m sold, I need to see what this place is all about.’ So we went and you know — we had no idea at the time. And I kind of found out after listening to a podcast before Tiger King. But they got really weird when Jay Lethal told them he was from Tampa when they asked where we were all from. Because that ends up being where Big Cat Rescue and Carole Baskin is from. So they thought we were some sort of spies since we were just some random guys walking in without a family like everybody else to this tiger zoo. So they thought we were some sort of like, animal activists or spies. And I think after they saw our reaction to, ‘Woah woah woah, we’re just here to see some tigers!’ They realized that we had no other intention besides exactly that. So it ended up being a fairly decent experience.”

On whether he saw any of the things said about the zoo in the series: “You know, the zoo wasn’t as bad as it’s portrayed on the documentary. But at the same time, there was a couple of tigers that we saw that we were like, ‘Oh, the tiger looks sad.’ So it’s crazy to see it now and see everything that happened.”