South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have responded to their Season 27 premiere, which saw a less-than-impressed reaction from the White House to the show's depiction of President Donald Trump.
The episode, which aired on Wednesday night and is streaming on Paramount+, depicts Trump in bed with Satan, makes references to the president's urging for people to move on from the so-called "Epstein list", and features a deepfake PSA sequence in which Trump is portrayed as stumbling through the desert, getting naked, and revealing a talking micropenis, which states, "I'm Donald J. Trump, and I endorse this message."
The White House's angry reaction to the South Park episode was palpable, with White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers saying in a statement published by ABC News, "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."
Parker and Stone appeared on a panel at San Diego’s Comic-Con International on Thursday, during which the pair were asked if they had anticipated the reaction to their South Park episode. "We’re terribly sorry," Parker responded, staring out to the audience.
During the panel, Parker said South Park's producers requested the animated micropenis in the deepfake sequence be blurred.
"They like, 'OK, but we’re gonna blur the penis,' and I'm like, ‘No you’re not gonna blur the penis,’” Parker said. Stone chimed in saying, "We put eyes on the penis. If we put eyes on the penis, we won't blur it. That was a whole conversation with grown-up people for about four fucking days."
"Because then it's a character!" said Parker.
The Season 27 South Park premiere, aptly titled "Sermon on the 'Mount," also took jabs at Paramount, days after Parker and Stone signed a $1.5 billion deal with the company for global streaming rights to South Park and 50 new episodes over five years. In particular, the episode roasts Paramount's $16 million settlement with Trump, in which the president alleged "deceitful" editing of a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The settlement has been criticised by press freedom advocates and notably, The Late Show host Stephen Colbert, the latter who labelled it a "big fat bribe," days before his show was unceremoniously cancelled by Paramount-owned network CBS — which claimed it was unrelated.
In the South Park episode, there's a 60 Minutes segment showing reporters terrified to make anti-Trump statements ("he's probably watching") and a storyline in which Trump sues the town, resulting in the residents being slapped with a hefty settlement fee and an order to run pro-Trump PSAs like the aforementioned NSFW deepfake nude scene.
"You guys saw what happened to CBS? Yeah, well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount," says Jesus (yes, Jesus) during a key scene in the episode. “Do you really want to end up like Colbert?"
