John Cameron Mitchell and I are driving through New Orleans, in a black VW Tiguan new enough to not yet have plates, to see the house that Joe Exotic bought. Not Joe himself, the exotic-animal zookeeper (a.k.a. Joseph Maldonado-Passage) made famous by Netflix’s opiate-of-the-pandemic docuseries Tiger King, who is currently serving time for attempted murder for hire in a federal penitentiary in North Carolina. But playing Joe Exotic in Peacock’s new scripted series Joe vs. Carole, which begins streaming March 3 and dramatizes Exotic’s zesty, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt criminal rivalry with fellow big-cat keeper Carole Baskin (Kate McKinnon), is what gave Mitchell the wherewithal to become a homeowner at the age of 58.
For 29 years, home for Mitchell has been a rent-stabilized West Village…
