'South Park' creators aim to scale back Trump coverage
The creators of South Park have acute Trump fatigue — so much so that they plan to scale back on the number of storylines about him when they return to work on the show's 21st season later this year.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone are currently in Australia opening a production of their Tony-winning musical The Book of Mormon -- just as news of the new president's phone call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the rounds. The Aussie media has been eager to talk Trump, a prospect the two found a bit exhausting.
"I'm so Trumped out already," Trey Parker told Australia's Sydney Morning Herald Friday. "I'm so done. For me, it would be nice to have a show that has nothing to do with that."
During the show's most recent season, elementary school teacher Mr. Garrison served as a bronzer-smeared Trump proxy who unsuccessfully tried to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, only to be made leader of the free world. (In the South Park universe, the actual Trump appears to be the Safety Dance-loving, border-wall-building unnamed former president of Canada, who was assassinated by Garrison.)
Additionally, the show, which already has a quick turnaround time, hurriedly rewrote the episode that aired the night after the 2016 election to include Trump's surprise victory.
“We were really trying to make fun of what was going on, but we couldn’t keep up,” Parker explained to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “It was, like, what was actually happening was way funnier than anything we could come up with. You know what I mean? So ... we decided to just kind of back off and let them do their comedy and we'll do ours."
"Take a little break, let everyone in government do their comedy," Stone chimed in during the Sydney Morning Herald interview, adding that, "we don't have (to record) more shows until August, we're psyched about that. We'll see if we can kick it up a level. South Park can only represent old white guys in so many ways."