Tiger King star Rick Kirkham once explained that he loathed himself so much he couldn’t look at his own reflection when he hit his lowest point as a crack cocaine addict.
While Netflix ’s hit documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness focused on the rise and fall of Joe Exotic, co-star Rick, 61, has a dark past of his own.
In the course of the eight part Netflix documentary it is revealed that Rick attempted a last roll of the dice by plucking big cat enthusiast Joe from obscurity with the intention of creating a reality show about the zoo owner.
Rick’s own career had been derailed in the past when he became a “hardcore crack cocaine for more than a decade”.
During his time as an addict, Rick said: “I lost my career in television. I lost my health. I lost my home and all my possessions. And within a year, I lost my wife and two sons.”
In resurfaced footage from 2007, Rick is seen being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey ahead of the release of his documentary film, TV Junkie, which chronicled his struggles with crack.
A low point came when Rick interviewed President George H.W Bush to discuss the subject of drug abuse – after taking hardcore drugs himself ahead of the high profile interview.
In the interview with Oprah, Rick revealed: “I had been smoking crack an hour beforehand, so I was high when I interviewed the President.”
The confession prompted Oprah to ask: “So, standing there high, interviewing the President, talking about not doing drugs, and being at an event where you were talking about it, did you feel like a fraud?”
Rick replied: “I hated myself. Absolutely loathed myself. Could not look at myself in the mirror.”
(Image: Netflix)
And asked why he didn’t stop taking drugs, Rick said: “I can’t tell you why I didn’t stop. It is a psychological addiction that when you go too high, you go too low, you go to the drug.”
Rick was the subject of a documentary film called TV Junkie that chronicled his drug addition.
During his addiction, Rick was a ‘functioning drug addict’ as he also held down a journalistic job at US TV magazine show Inside Edition while hooked on crack.
(Image: Netflix)
Tiger King partly documents Rick’s attempt to produce a successful reality TV show featuring Joe Exotic as the main star.
His efforts ended in vain, however, as all the footage recorded for the proposed reality show were destroyed by a fire in 2015.
Rick reveals his devastation at the loss of his work during the course of the Tiger King documentary series.
