When South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone locked in a reported $1.5 billion five-year take care of Paramount on the eleventh hour earlier than their Season 27 premiere, the comedy duo had been seeking to assert their company in an atmosphere that might quickly be upended by new mum or dad firm Skydance and CEO David Ellison. The end result? A scathing debut aimed toward President Donald Trump — whose approval was, ahem, paramount to the completion of the merger. Since that inaugural episode in late July, a gradual stream of blistering satirical installments has not let up on the POTUS and key White Home officers, from VP JD Vance to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
In a brand new interview with the New York Instances, Stone defined of the choice to mock the GOP chief: “We simply needed to present our independence one way or the other.”
The scribe added that though audiences might assume some degree of censorship behind the scenes — particularly in a hostile media atmosphere the place Paramount’s CBS canceled The Late Present with Stephen Colbert (defended by high brass as a purely financially motivated choice, the timing of which got here after the host went after his house community) — that isn’t the case.
“I do know with the Colbert factor and all of the Trump stuff, folks suppose sure issues, however they’re letting us do no matter we wish, to their credit score,” Stone stated of the dearth of pushback. (In flip, Colbert has praised South Park for its censure of Trump, calling the present’s deepfaked PSA video of a unadorned Trump “an vital message of hope for our occasions.”)
Naturally, the White Home was seething over the matter, with Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers telling Deadline post-premiere: “This present hasn’t been related for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired concepts in a determined try for consideration. President Trump has delivered on extra guarantees in simply six months than every other president in our nation’s historical past – and no fourth-rate present can derail President Trump’s scorching streak.”
Sadly for Trump and his administration, nonetheless, the relentless deluge of jokes has led to a scores bump and renaissance of kinds for the long-running animated present.
It’s a profitable components that Parker and Stone will probably be sticking by in the intervening time.
“There’s no getting away from this,” Parker advised the Instances. “It’s like the federal government is simply in your face in every single place you look. Whether or not it’s the precise authorities or whether or not it’s all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubes and all of that, and it’s simply all political and political as a result of it’s greater than political. It’s popular culture.”
