There isn’t much love for Tiger King’s Joe Exotic. At all.

Zoo employee Cowie said a firm “good riddance” to Exotic, insisting that he’ll likely die in jail. Joshua Dial opined that “people in Oklahoma hate Joe Exotic.” And zoo manager Saffery, who lost an arm in a tiger attack, added that he trusts the tiger that attacked him more than he trusts his former boss.

It was Rick Kirkham, though, who dished the most dirt. Revealing that he’s sorry he ever met the self-dubbed ‘Tiger King’, Kirkham recalled how Exotic – terrified of his own animals – would only ever pose with two tigers who were blind and tranquilised.

“Joe was terrified of big cats,” Kirkham said. “He was scared to death of lions and tigers. And in the shots that you see in there, where he’s in with the two tigers, the white one and the other one – the white one is blind and the other one is on tranquilizers. It’s idiotic to think how he’s become famous as ‘The Tiger King’ when he’s so terrified of big cats.”

Tiger King’s Joe Exotic was incredibly cruel to animals, even more so than viewers realised

Kirkham shared an upsetting story about a longtime fan of Exotic’s zoo, who brought the ‘Tiger King’ her aging horse and asked him to give it a good home in its advanced years.

“No sooner did that lady get off the park than Joe said, ‘Rick, follow me,’” Kirkham said. “Walked right up to the trailer, pulled the Western revolver out of his holster, shot the horse dead, and said, ‘I don’t take care of nobody’s animals. Now they’re tiger meat.’ And he had the horse cut up and fed to the tigers.

“It was unbelievably cruel.”

Netflix’s The Tiger King And I underlines uncomfortable home truths about Joe Exotic