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While the rest of America may have to collectively sit through a third Donald Trump campaign, the creators of South Park are sitting this one out.
In a new interview, Trey Parker and Matt Stone discussed why the 27th season of South Park won’t premiere until after the 2024 election — and Trump’s ability to out-satirize them in real life has something to do with it.
“We’ve tried to do South Park through four or five presidential elections, and it is such a hard thing to— it’s such a mind scramble, and it seems like it takes outsized importance,” Stone told Vanity Fair. “Obviously, it’s f—ing important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun.”
Comedy Central
Parker added, “I don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump.”
While Parker admits that their decision also has to do with having to wait “for Paramount to figure all their s— out,” Stone notes that skipping Trump is definitely “on purpose.”
Since Trump won the 2016 election, South Park‘s resident demagogue Mr. Garrison has followed a similar trajectory, but the creators of the iconic animated show realized early on they had bitten off more than they could chew.
Back in 2017, Parker and Stone said that they couldn’t keep pace with the absurdity that had become real life and “decided to just back off and let [politicians] do their comedy and we’ll do ours.”
“It’s tricky and it’s really tricky now as satire has become reality,” Parker told ABC News Australia. “We were really trying to make fun of what was going on but we couldn’t keep up and what was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with.”
However, the delay in South Park‘s return doesn’t mean the notoriously prolific duo — who are just an Oscar short of an EGOT — are resting on their laurels. Or resting at all. They’re currently promoting their documentary, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, following their journey to save and renovate the beloved restaurant made famous by the show, which filed for bankruptcy in 2021.
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