Saff Saffery has been hunkered down in his new California home for the last few weeks, in self-isolation like most of the rest of the country. Cutting down on trips to the store for essentials, keeping his distance when he does leave the house. But when he went on a quick Wal-Mart run last week, it was only minutes before he was recognized. Three people rushed up saying, “Hey! You’re from that show! Can I take a picture? Can I tag you on Instagram?”
“That was surreal, I’ll be honest with you,” Saffery told me on a phone call Wednesday afternoon. “I’ve always laid pretty low. I’m a low-key person. I’ve always been that way. So, it’s new to me.”
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As many of us are cooped up in our homes in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Netflix documentary series Tiger King has been a welcome distraction. Every character is more unbelievable than the next. There’s Joe Exotic, the gay, polygamous country-music-singing zoo owner who ran for president and was then convicted of murder-for-hire. And there’s Doc Antle, another zoo keeper with a group of women employees-cum-romantic partners who once appeared in a Britney Spears performance. And, of course, Carole Baskin, an animal rights activist and Joe Exotic’s rival, whose husband went missing in 1997 and is denying implications in the documentary that she was involved in his disappearance.
But then there’s Saffery, the even-tempered manager at Joe Exotic’s zoo and the straight man to this cast of characters. Saffery is introduced to us early in the series with footage of a brutal attack by a tiger after he put his arm in the animal’s cage. Saffery is given the option of two years of reconstructive surgeries or amputation, and he chooses amputation—so he can get back to the big cats, which he does, just days after leaving the hospital.
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When we talked by phone this week, Saffery told me that his life has changed a lot since filming ended. He says he declined to be in the documentary by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin several times before finally agreeing. Despite the documentary's runaway success, the story of Joe Exotic has actually been told before—in a Wondery podcast by Robert Moor, in a 2013 New York magazine feature, as well as coverage of his murder-for-hire trial, which concludes Tiger King.
“I just didn’t want to be a part of any of the hype,” Saffery says. “A lot of the people that were approaching me at the time just, they wanted to entertain. It was all about entertainment, entertainment, how can we make a story out of this? And I personally didn’t want to be a part of a story. I wanted to tell my story, if anything.”
He finally decided to participate so he’d be able to tell his own story. And so he sat for hours of interviews, calmly describing his own attack and his life at G.W. Zoo. Though the producers told him the series would be premiering last month, he decided not to watch—until his sister called saying the show had exploded and his name was everywhere.
“I thoroughly enjoyed it as a viewer,” says Saffery, who watched all seven episodes in a single sitting. “I definitely enjoyed it. There were obviously some parts where it was hard because it brings out some big, hard, deep issues. And then, of course, I experienced a lot throughout my time there at the park. I was there for almost 10 years and it was my entire life in those moments.”
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The graphic footage of Saffery's 2013 attack is shown in the second episode of the show. He says rewatching it didn't affect him, but he worried about how it would impact his family. "I was completely, consciously aware throughout that entire event. I know what happened and I've accepted it and whatnot," he says. "I think the hardest part for me was now my family has gone through that experience. The people that I know personally, my friends, family and loved ones. They know that it happened, but they didn't see it firsthand, and I think that was definitely a reality check for them."
After the show aired, one of the conversations about his role in the series centered around how it misgendered Saffery, when Moor, the creator of the podcast tweeted, “Saff, the person who got mauled by the tiger, told me repeatedly that he is trans, prefers to be called Saff (not “Kelci”), and uses he/him pronouns. So please do likewise.”
In Tiger King, Saffery is identified by a name he doesn't use, and referred to using the wrong pronouns. “I don’t care if they’re calling me she; I don’t care if they’re calling me he. On a daily basis, I am called 17 different things. I never really took it to heart.
"I love being able to speak on this,” Saffery says. “Obviously it’s not something that I’ve even actively participated in ever, so, for context, my conversation with Rob was that he asked me, ‘What do you prefer? Saff or Kelci?’ And of course I said Saff because that’s what I’ve been called for the past 20 years. I was in the Army prior to the park and they always use last names. So, Saff was my preferred name. And I’ve always gone by him since I could say that out loud. My family was always very supportive—it was never an issue."
Saffery says the portrayals of his former colleagues were accurate—and that his longtime boss Joe Exotic is “100 percent everything that they portray him to be,” but that there were sides of him that weren’t explored in the series. For example, Joe Exotic is shown serving a big meal to his staff at one point in the series, but Saffery says there is a bigger story behind that.
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“Every single year for Thanksgiving, he cooked—he, personally, and his parents—for a Thanksgiving meal and they set it out for free for anyone to come to the park and have a Thanksgiving meal on him. Every single year. And that was never in the news, but it was real; it happened. It’s stuff like that I wish they would have delved into a little more.”
Saffery left the zoo in 2018—just before Joe left and it was taken over by new ownership—and hasn’t looked back. He stayed in Oklahoma until earlier this year, when he moved to California, where he works at a “clock in, clock out job.”
“I was having a pretty rough time, maybe three or four months prior to deciding to actually leave [the zoo],” says Saffery. “Just trying to dive deep and find myself again. The reason I was there was the passion, being able to work with these incredible animals on a daily basis and what I could do in return for them. I took [time] to reflect on that to see if it was actually paying off, if I was making a dent or a difference of if there was even a mission to continue fighting. And when Joe lost his husband [Travis Maldonado], I saw a change in him that solidified for me, personally, that I was probably in this fight alone.”
Saffery is guarded when talking about his new life in California—he knows how much attention is being paid to him in the aftermath of the documentary and he doesn’t want to bring anyone from his current circle into the spotlight with him. But he will say he’s no longer in contact with any of the people from the documentary, including Joe Exotic, who is currently in prison. And he no longer works with animals—and doesn’t think he will ever do it again.
“We did the best that we could with what we had. I think we obviously had too many, and that’s where the issues came into play for the most part, as far as animal care goes,” he says. “As far as day to day, those animals were so loved by everyone who took part in their care.”
He says he calls on his old big animal sources to spend time some personal time with tigers. And he may one day reconnect with his old colleagues.
“I invested so much blood, sweat, and tears into that place, and for my own health and sanity, I needed to take a break. Those colleagues—and those were friends in the deepest meaning of the word—and I would love to reconnect. But I would also love to find myself first.”
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