'Joe vs. Carole' star John Cameron Mitchell on the Shakespearean tragedy of the Tiger King.
March 4, 2022, 8:00 PM UTCThe antiheroes of the big cat world are getting the star treatment in “Joe vs. Carole,” the new Peacock series based on the second season of Wondery’s “Over My Dead Body” podcast. The show, which stars heavy-hitters John Cameron Mitchell, Kate McKinnon and Kyle MacLachlan, looks to get at the truth — if not the facts — of the bitter feud that ended in Joe Exotic’s murder-for-hire plot against the Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin.
Mitchell was so intrigued by the character that he sent in a self-taped audition, his first in 27 years. He said he hasn’t had such a meaty role since his 2019 podcast “Anthem: Homonculus,” a radio drama-style production co-starring Glenn Close and Patti LuPone about a gay artist, turned bitter shut-in, who finds sudden success after launching a “tumor telethon.”
“Their queerness and their femininity is not welcome, and they had to forge their way,” Mitchell said of Hedwig and Exotic. “Hedwig does what most creative queer people do, which is get out of town. Joe decided to stay and fight it out. He created his own kingdom within the hostile environment, because hebeing a country boy. He made it into drag. He imitated his oppressor, in a way, and was just as much a showman as Hedwig — and just as bitter and just as angry.
As Mitchell points out, he was one of a small subset of actors who was openly gay when he began his professional career in the mid-1980s, well before there was a market for queer roles.
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