Rick Kirkham

Rick Kirkham is a veteran television journalist who signs on to document Joe Exotic's chaotic zoo full-time, camera always rolling. Brash, self-assured, and clearly relishing a good story, he moves into the compound expecting the wild footage of a career, embedding himself in Joe's orbit with the instincts of a newsman who thinks he's seen everything.

Kirkham works because he's an outsider with professional distance who still gets pulled into the madness, giving the series its wry, knowing narrator energy. His decades of tabloid TV experience read on his face as equal parts amusement and disbelief, and his own account of what happened to years of his footage becomes one of the documentary's most jaw-dropping asides.