“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone absolutely roasted their employer’s settlement with Donald Trump as well as the president himself during the show’s Season 27 premiere Wednesday night. But the duo’s appearance at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, their first in almost a decade, was largely free of controversy or political talk.
Parker and Stone appeared as part of Comedy Central’s overall adult animation panel, alongside “Beavis and Butthead” creator Mike Judge and actor-comedian Andy Samberg (“Digman”). The panel was held the day after not only the aforementioned Season 27 premiere, but also the pair’s signing of a $1.5 billions streaming deal with Comedy Central owner Paramount Global.
The panel kicked off with a joke referencing Trump’s angry reaction to the Season Premiere. “We’re terribly sorry,” Parker quipped when asked by panel moderator Josh Horowitz about it shortly after Parker and Stone took the stage.
Later in the panel, Horowitz joked, “I have a subpoena for you,” prompting “I’m ready” from Parker and some light chuckles in the audience. And later still, when asked what fans could expect from the rest of “South Park” Season 27, Matt Stone joked, “no politics.”
But otherwise, anyone expecting the creative team to diss Paramount or Trump — or simply comment on the news earlier Thursday that, after a series of concessions (or what critics argue were blatant attempts to curry favor), the Trump administration finally approved the Paramount-Skydance merger — likely came away somewhat bummed out.
The duo did offer a bit of insight into making this week’s episode, which they say included some back-and-forth with Comedy Central over showing Trump’s penis.
“It’s always like, ‘So we love the episode.’ They’re like, ‘OK, but we’re gonna blur the penis.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you’re not gonna blur the penis,’” Parker recalled. He said he then found a workaround that (eventually) made the image amenable for the network.
“If we put eyes on the penis, we won’t blur it,” Parker recalled saying. “And then that was a whole conversation for about four f–king days. It’s a character.”
Even so, in a relative rarity for a Thursday night, Hall H was packed with fans in a way normally seen at the big Saturday events studios like Marvel and Warner Bros. put on. Though the fact both of the big super hero factories are sitting this year’s SDCC out might play as much a role as Parker and Stone’s continuing cultural relevance.
Mostly the panel was a typically Hall H chat about how creators work and what’s upcoming from their projects. At one point, Parker gave a glimpse into the raw-dog way “South Park” episodes are produced, explaining, “We were at ‘South Park’ this morning trying to figure out what next week’s show is going to be. So right now, we don’t know but that’s how the show’s always been. And because it’s animated the way it is, we can sculpt it and sculpt it and build it. We do it a lot like they did ‘SNL.’”
“I mean, it seems like it’s very stressful, the way I don’t know what the episode is next week. It’s super stressful,” Parker added shortly after.
Meanwhile, if you never saw it, the Season 27 premiere roasted not only Paramount but also the myriad other institutions other companies who have chosen to settle with Donald Trump rather than fight back against his harassment lawsuits and institutional abuses.
“Sermon on the Mount” depicted Trump literally in bed with Satan, involved Trump suing the town of South Park, and featured a parody of the biblical sermon of the title in which the show’s version of Jesus Christ urged everyone to fear and obey Trump.
At the end, as one character explains, the town of South Park settles with Trump and agrees as part of the settlement produce pro-Trump content pro bono — which the show does via the fake PSA touting Trump’s greatness as a fake version of the current president struggles through a desert, removing his clothing until he’s naked. At which point the fake Trump’s very tiny penis turns out to be able to talk. “Trump: His penis is teeny tiny, but his love for America is large,” the fake ad concluded.
The White House angrily denounced the episode on Thursday in a statement that called “South Park” a “fourth-rate” that “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”
Earlier this week, Parker and Stone resolved their months-long conflict with Paramount Global over streaming rights with a new global deal with $1.5 billion over 5 years. This deal includes 50 new episodes of “South Park” and finally brings both the current season as well as all 26 previous seasons to Comedy Central and Paramount+ for the first time.
