Bird watcher central to ‘Central Park Karen’ saga gets TV show on National Geographic

The black comics writer and scientist who was threatened with police by a white woman after telling her to keep her dog on a leash in New York City’s Central Park is set to launch his own TV show.

Christian Cooper will star in National Geographic’s Extraordinary Birder, which will be released on June 17, the network announced. It comes three years after he was confronted by Amy Cooper on May 25, 2020 – the same day George Floyd was killed.

Christian Cooper, 59, was birdwatching in the Ramble area of ​​the park at the time and had asked Cooper — no relation — to put her dog on a leash in accordance with park rules.

The new trailer makes no reference to the Central Park incident. It begins with the Harvard-educated scientist’s statement, “I’m Christian Cooper and I’m a bird watcher!”

The show’s release comes at the same time that Amy Cooper is deeply embroiled in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against her former employer, Wall Street bank Franklin Templeton. The company fired Amy Cooper the day after the video appeared.

In a trailer for Christian Cooper’s new show, he can be seen in various exotic locations as he follows beautiful birds, such as a great blue one.

“The nice thing about birdwatching is you never know what you’re going to get… this is what birdwatching is all about,” he explains.

‘Or [he is] braving stormy seas in Alaska for puffins, trekking through rainforests in Puerto Rico for parrots, or climbing a bridge in Manhattan for a peregrine falcon, he’s committed to learning more about these extraordinary feathered creatures and taking us into the remarkable world show the sky above,” read a press release promoting the show.

Amy Cooper, meanwhile, has kept a low profile since the incident and did not respond to a DailyMail.com request for comment. She also continues to fight her through the courts.

Last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit appeared “skeptical” of Amy Cooper’s arguments in her appeal against a lower court’s decision to dismiss her wrongful termination claim, according to the New York Law Journal.

When Amy Cooper was fired, Franklin Templeton said in a statement that the bank “will not tolerate any form of racism” and that they had conducted an “internal review” before reaching a decision.

The woman, who was dubbed “Central Park Karen,” first filed her lawsuit in May 2021, claiming she had been defamed by the bank.

Her attorney, Matt Litt, argued that the wording of the company’s statement implied that investigators “had facts unknown to the public and second, that the defendants used those facts to establish that Ms. Cooper was a racist,” reports her lawyer. Deal breaker.

Circuit Judge Alison Nathan disagreed with Litt’s assessment, saying the company made it clear in their statement that the decision was related to its assessment of the Central Park incident.

In another conversation, circuit judge Rosemary Pooler asked Litt if there were other things Franklin Templeton should have considered before firing Amy Cooper.

Litt said the company had “stated” that she was a racist.

“Where did they say she was a racist?” They said, ‘We don’t tolerate racism’ … that’s different,” Judge Barrington Parker interjected.

“The statement was connected to Amy every time,” Litt replied.

‘Of course it was. When you watch the video, the connection is automatic. Have you seen the video?’ When the attorney said he sued Parker, “She’s right there and says, ‘I fear for my life because this black man is filming me.’

told Christian Cooper CBS mornings in June 2020 that he said ‘”Excuse me ma’am, but dogs in the Ramble must be kept on a lead at all times’… And she said, “Well, the dog races are closed.”‘

He can be heard in the video he recorded telling Amy to “please don’t come closer to me,” to which she replied, holding her dog by its collar, that she was “going to take a picture of you and the police would call. . I’m going to tell them an African-American man is threatening my life.”

“She basically pulled the pin off the racing grenade and tried to throw it at me,” he told CBS Mornings.

Cooper’s video was viewed thousands of times and Amy was dubbed the “Central Park Karen” and eventually lost her job and was charged with a felony for making a false police report. The charges were later dropped after Manhattan prosecutors said she learned her lesson in therapy.

Amy Cooper told Bari Weiss on his Honesty podcast that she was “alone in the park as a woman” and that she didn’t know if she had “any option” other than to contact the authorities and “explored all my options.”

‘I tried to leave. I’ve been trying to look for someone nearby. There was no noise, no sound,” she said on the podcast.

She later claimed on the podcast that Christian told her, “If you’re going to do what you want to do, I’m going to do what I want to do, but you won’t like it.” what Christian confirmed to CBS Mornings was true.

The birdwatcher had brought out dog treats to help Amy leash her dog—an old birdwatcher’s trick, he said. However, Amy didn’t see it that way.

She said on the podcast, “I’m trying to figure out what that means? Is that a physical attack on me? An attack on my dog? What’s he going to do?’

“I look up and he’s holding these dog treats in one hand and a bike helmet in the other and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, is this guy going to lure my dog ​​in and try to hit him with his bike helmet?’ ? And if I end up there, will I be hit by this bicycle helmet?”

Amy also says she was taken aback by Christian’s change in behavior when she called the police.

“It’s really weird because he’s still standing there, you know, the same very physical pose, and suddenly a voice comes out of him from a guy who’s been very domineering to me,” she says.

‘Suddenly, you know, almost this victim voice, [saying,] ‘Don’t come near me. Don’t come any closer,” she says.

“Like he’s almost terrified of me… It’s even more terrifying to me now because you don’t yell at me anymore – if you kept yelling at me, at least it was consistent, but now his whole verbal behavior has changed.”

Amy says that when she asked Christian to stop recording, he refused, which made her even more worried.

“The moment she makes that call, it’s very clear that there’s no physical threat to her at all,” Christian told CBS Mornings. “It’s the iPhone and the dog’s treat.”

Amy also revealed on the podcast that she became “suicidal” and had to flee the country after the incident following a major wave of hate on the internet.

Cooper has since written a book for DC Comics called It’s A Bird, the first installment of the company’s digital anthology series called Represent, according to Open Culture.

The comic book has a similar storyline to Cooper’s own encounter with Amy, but was set in a suburban area rather than Central Park’s Ramble. In the story, protagonist Jules encounters a white woman with her dog loose.

Cooper also has roots in Marvel and was the company’s first openly gay writer and editor.

National Geographic didn’t say when Extraordinary Birder would be released.