South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have said they will refrain from “mocking everybody in government” in future episodes.
The previous two seasons featured a character and situations inspired by Donald Trump, with Mr Garrison’s recent character arc directly modelled after the Celebrity Apprentice host’s ascent to the White House. But that’s likely to change.
“It feels like it’s going to be more difficult,” Stone said in an interview with ABC News in Australia. Parker went on to add: “They’re already going out and doing the comedy. It’s not something you can make fun of.”
The first episode of the most recent season was the highest-rated premiere in a decade as Parker and Stone tried to keep up with weekly election developments but reviews were mixed.
“It’s tricky and it’s really tricky now as satire has become reality,” Parker said. “We were really trying to make fun of what was going on [last season] but we couldn’t keep up. What was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with. So we decided to just back off and let [politicians] do their comedy and we’ll do ours.” Parker has previously referred to Trump and Clinton as “the giant douche and the turd sandwich”.
“People say to us all the time, ‘Oh, you guys are getting all this good material,’ like we’re happy about some of this stuff that’s happening,” Stone said. “But I don’t know if that’s true. It doesn’t feel that way.”
• An earlier version of this article switched the first names of the creators. This version has been corrected
