South Park‘s superstar creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were in fine form on Tuesday afternoon at a special “For Your Consideration” Emmys event in Hollywood. Following their Monday night appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! where they showed off a finger puppet version of Donald Trump’s penis, the duo chatted with self-described South Park superfan Michael De Luca, co-chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, about their show and career.

Stone discussed the strange nature of doing timely socio-political comedy in the Trump era. “We started out even before the internet, so as comedians you’re always jealous when you see something on TikTok and it’s really good,” he said. “But then you start competing with the Secretary of War and the President because they’re online too and making jokes, so it’s all disorienting. I really think Iran’s LEGO videos as our competition, because they do fast animation, and that’s what we do. We’re doing timely stuff, and when I first saw that I sent that to Trey and said, ‘This is our new competition!’”

Parker then talked about how today’s South Park is different from the show that began its run on Comedy Central in August of 1997. “We’re always reacting not just to the culture, but also to who we are in life. We’re not as crazy as we were 25, 30 years ago,” he pointed out. “We’ve become parents and both things are put in the show. For example, the character of Randy used to be me making fun of my dad, and now, that’s just me being me and making fun of me.”

The duo recalled the show’s humble origins as a Christmas card videotape, which went viral in Hollywood, back when it meant people dubbing the VHS tape and passing it around to their friends. He recalled, “We were 25 then, and we’d go to parties in L.A. and people would tell us, ‘You’ve got to watch this tape,’ and we’d be like ‘We made that,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh no, I met the guys who made that. They got jobs at MTV right now!’ and we’d be like, ‘Whaaaaaat!?’”

Stone and Parker brought up the fact that they like to push everything to the last minute works in their benefit and credited the evolving technologies that helped them do their job so quickly. “It’s immediate by design,” said Parker. “We’ve always made the show the same way. We basically come in on Thursday and the show will air the next Wednesday. In the early days, we relied on Avid and CorelDraw! It was the marriage of those two things that allowed us do to it so quickly. We’ve always been great tech nerds and always asked ‘What can we do with that?’”

Playing with New Technologies

The conversation then turned to AI and Deep Voodoo, the duo’s deepfake company which opened its doors five years ago. Stone explained, “We’re using some of the stuff on South Park now. I know it’s a hot topic as people are trying to figure out what it means for the industry, but for us, it’s so invigorating to watch what can be done.”

Parker recalled a conversation he recently had with one of the head artists on his show. “When we started South Park, they had just begun drawing on tablets instead of using pen and paper, and they were getting tons of shit from other artists. But these are artists, they went to art school, they know everything about art history and they make much better stuff on their own than South Park. But they, like us, want to know about the new tools and what they could make with them. What’s crazy that when we first figured out the program, it was pre-Maya, and we were thinking, ‘Dude, you can make an animated show in one week.’ What’s funny is that we were sitting there and thinking that everyone is going to do this. The technology is here and soon, everyone is going to make animation that way. But 25 years later, people still weren’t doing that. It took a very long time for the old ways to change.”

Stone added, “The secret of South Park is that people think we do it real fast. We do it in 10 days instead of six days these days. We actually do 90 minutes because every shot has different iterations. The secret isn’t that we do it fast, we wait until the last minute. It’s that we are able to change every line. We can just run in the booth and change things. What’s happening with AI is that it’s going to bring those tools that we enjoy into more beautiful animation and ultimately live action. I think the tech community has come and said that [they’re] going to take jobs. People have to realize that all those guys are doing is raising money. That’s just a marketing pitch. They’re out there selling something. I think what’s going to happen is that more tools are going to be available to more filmmakers, and just as many people will be employed. It will change things, but I think there has been a panic because of the way it has been presented by the tech guys.”

Stone and Parker then talked about the impact of the highly visible and acclaimed 28th season of the show, which included brutal and very funny depictions of Trump, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth and Peter Thiel as well as appearances by regular guests Satan and Jesus. Parker said, “When we see a negative space where nobody is saying something, then we’ll say it. Sometimes, you don’t do the thing everyone’s else is doing. What felt powerful about the last season was that that we decided to really throw our show out on the table, and it became the joke that we just couldn’t stop doing. We were just going to do the Trump stuff on that first show of the season, and we laid into him so hard, and it all became, like, ‘Oh, well, who’s the bully now?’ It became this totally juvenile joke that we were going to do every single time.”

Always Have One Bag Packed

The duo confirmed that Season 29 of the show will premiere on Comedy Central on September 16. “Last year, we learned that doing 10 shows in a row was too much. Five or six is the perfect amount. It’s painful and hard work, but 10 is too stressful, and you could feel it in the later episodes,” said Stone.

They also mentioned that creating their outrageous topical comedy for so many years has given them a helpful, devil-may-care attitude. “We always have one bag packed. Honestly, we’ve been saying that to each other since we were 25,” said Parker. “Back when we did the South Park movie, we thought, dude, they’re going to run us out of town! We’ve always had this mentality of, ‘Oh, you’re done with us? OK, that’s great, we’re good!’ The biggest thing is that we stay honest to ourselves. That, along with the idea that I’m older now. I’m not trying to do the same stuff I was doing in seasons three or four. I care about different things that I cared about then. You’re not trying to relive the past.”

The full South Park library is available to stream on Paramount+. Season 29 will premiere Wednesday, September 16 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central, streaming the next in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

The Television Academy will open Emmy Awards nominations voting on June 11; nominees will be announced July 8. The 78th Emmy Awards ceremony is scheduled for September 14, 2026.