Tiger King's Joe Exotic has 'faith' he'll be released from prison in 2025

Tiger King's Joe Exotic was sentenced to 21 years in prison in 2019, a year before the hit Netflix series took the internet by storm, but the former zoo owner and documentary star says that he has "faith" that he won't be spending his full sentence behind bars and claims that he will be released in 2025.

Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, spoke to Us Weekly about his health, his life in prison, and what he plans to do once he gets out of prison.

Joe Exotic shared a major update on his health and life in prison

Maldonado-Passage revealed that he's been going through some major health issues while in prison. He told Us Weekly that whils his prostate cancer is in remission, but he revealed that may not be the end of his health journey because he believes that he has cancer in one of his lungs.

"I have to take it as it comes," he told the publication about his ongoing health issues. Maldonado-Passage isn't letting the health problems he's been facing stop him from staying positive about getting out of prison in 2025, though. He said, "I still have faith that I’m going to walk out of here -- I just need to live for the next five or six months and hope for the best."

According to the Netflix star, fighting this health battle in prison is less than ideal. About the medical facility in the prison, he alleged that there are some major issues, saying, "Part of the roof is missing, and we have plastic bags above our beds taped to the ceiling to guide water out the window. In the last week, I caught 15 rats on sticky boards under my bed. Now 140 of us have scabies."

Despite this, he shared with Us Weekly that he's been doing good things while in prison and that while one of the things he misses about the outside world is helping people, he's found a way to do that while behind bars. "I run a soup kitchen in here. That’s something Carole and nobody [else] can take away from me, that I gave back to society."

How does Joe Exotic feel about Tiger King?

Even though Tiger King was the docuseries that had viewers from all over the world glued to their screens and thrust Joe Maldonado-Passage into the spotlight, he doesn't look on the series quite so fondly.

In fact, he revealed to Us Weekly that he's planning to file a lawsuit against the production team.

"We’re working on a lawsuit, so the prison let my lawyers come in with it on a computer," he told the publication and said he was "disgusted" by the way he was portrayed on the series. "Carole and I never had a deadly fight going on — it was blown out of proportion."

Aside from the lawsuit, Maldonado-Passage said he wants to put the series that made him famous behind him and not let it "define" him anymore after he's released from prison and can go back to his normal life.