Matt Stone Says ‘South Park’ Creators Can ‘Do Whatever They Want’ at Paramount; New Episode Revealed

If they gave an Emmy Award for “wildest comeback of a long-running animated series,” South Park would be shoo-in. The show’s 27th season (and the tense battle for Paramount+ to secure U.S. streaming rights on the eve of Paramount Global’s acquisition by Skydance) has repeatedly grabbed headlines with no-holds-barred digs at President Donald Trump, VP JD Vance, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem and other major figures associated with the regime.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone delved into their latest season, which sparked major surges in viewership on both Comedy Central and streaming. According to Nielsen, the show’s viewership over the past four months has more than doubled its last season in 2023. With the network’s parent company canceling another Trump-targeting show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Disney-owned ABC’s shepherd-crooking of Jimmy Kimmel in the face of FCC threats (quickly reversed), it raises the question: How to the South Park boys get away with it?

“I know with the Colbert thing and all the Trump stuff, people think certain things, but they’re letting us do whatever we want, to their credit,” Stone told NYT. The duo point out that they self-describe as “equal opportunity offenders” against “extremists” on either end of the political spectrum.

The article details how just a few weeks before S27’s launch, Parker and Stone’s unflinching sights fell on Trump as their negotiations were seemingly slowed up the looming Skydance deal, which required the administration’s OK. They told NYT they decided to lampoon the President in the first episode “to show our independence somehow,” and the initial one-off character struck a “vein of comedy.” An administration spokeswoman later declared, “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

While the creators continue to discuss going back to South Park‘s regular, if outrageous, schoolboy-centric stories, Parker said they’ve realized “there’s no getting away from this.” He added, “It’s like the government is just in your face everywhere you look. Whether it’s the actual government or whether it is all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubes and all of that, and it’s just all political and political because it’s more than political. It’s pop culture.”

Today, Comedy Central previewed Wednesday night’s (November 12) episode premiere, “Sora Not Sorry.” The latest installment of the sensational season premieres at 10 p.m. ET/PT, streaming on Paramount+ and On Demand post-premiere.

In “Sora Not Sorry,” Butters’ Al revenge plan backfires, igniting an epidemic of fake videos at school that leaves Detective Harris struggling to tell fantasy from reality.

South Park creators Parker and Stone will be honored as Hall of Fame Award winners at this month’s World Animation Summit (Nov. 17-19) in North Hollywood. Visit animationmagazine.net/summit for more information and to register to attend.