The creators of the Emmy-winning series "South Park" intend to ignore Donald Trump when the popular animated series returns for its 27th season in 2025, they said in a rare interview.
"I don't know what else we can say about Trump," Matt Stone told Vanity Fair about the former US president whose life seems to be filled with drama.
Stone added that it is terribly confusing to cover topics like Trump satirically, and that this is also the reason why he will be avoided. "We've been trying to do 'South Park' for four or five presidential elections, and it's such a difficult task," explained Stone, who co-launched the series with Trey Parker in 1997 on Comedy Central. "And it seems like it's taking on too much importance. Obviously, it's important, but it kind of takes over everything and then we're having less fun," he added in an interview published Thursday.
Part of the reason why the latest season of "South Park" was given the year 2025 as a tentative date is that the writers wanted to give the platform Paramount+ - where the series is now shown - time "to get them in order."
But Stone also added that he and Parker deliberately decided to skip the election contest between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The view Stone presented to Vanity Fair is markedly different from how "South Park" handled the 2016 presidential race, which Trump unexpectedly won against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In the show, the elementary school teacher character, voiced by Parker, ran for president, defeated Clinton and was in the Oval Office for several seasons, and his look and style were clearly inspired by Trump.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Stone and Parker described how they made a "36-hour rush" to make it in time to do an episode about the 2016 election, after they, like most of the country, were shocked by Trump's victory.
Since then, Trump has provided commentators — satirical or not — with plenty of material, including his 2020 election loss to Biden and his conviction in May for felony falsification of business documents to conceal payments to a porn actress who claimed she had an affair with him.
Among numerous other legal problems, he faces three more criminal indictments stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden, as well as withholding state secrets after the end of his presidential term, and in July he survived an assassination attempt at a political rally.
"South Park" follows four boys growing up in a small town in Colorado. The series vulgarly satirized a wide range of subjects, managing to win over critics and establish itself as unusually long-running, although some viewers found its content too offensive.
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