Trey Parker and Matt Stone Have No Idea What Next Week’s ‘South Park’ Will Be About

South Park’s 27th season premiere sparked a media firestorm with its depiction of a Saddam-coded Trump, but that doesn’t mean that next week’s episode will feature the president or his talking micro-penis. In fact, Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t yet know what the show will be about.

South Park is obviously famous for its extremely tight, ulcer-inducing schedule, which allows the show to comment on very current events. Hence why the premiere included references to the firing of Stephen Colbert and not, say, the NFTs everybody’s already forgotten about.

During their recent appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, Parker and Stone were asked by moderator Josh Horowitz if their “six days to air” process is stressful. “I don’t know what the episode is next week, it’s super-stressful,” Parker responded. “Even like last weekend, I mean just three days ago, we were sitting there going, ‘I don’t know if people are going to like this.’ And we’re just changing as we go, and are reading stuff in the newspaper like, ‘Oh okay, let’s put that in there!’”

The BASEketball star did note that every element of the show’s production is housed in one building, which allows for the unique schedule. “It lets you touch every part of it,” Parker explained. “It lets you sculpt the show, you know? Because it is so nice to be able to do something and react to it. I still can’t write a scene and be like, ‘Oh that’s going to be good.’ I have to see it.”

Stone pointed out that “topicality has gotten probably more competitive” in the comedy world. “I feel competitive with what all the kids are doing on TikTok and YouTube,” he admitted. “I’m jealous of the tools that kids have today.”

Somewhat confusingly, Comedy Central released a trailer for Season 27 months ago, seemingly containing footage from upcoming episodes about topics such as bird flu, airline crashes and Trump’s trade war with Canada. 

Well, don’t expect to see any of that on the actual show. 

“Back in February, they’re like ‘We need to do a promo for the summer,’ and we’re like, ‘What?’ Like, I don’t know what we’re going to do this summer,” Parker recalled. “(The trailer) showed a whole bunch of clips, we made it all up for the promo. And everybody was going ‘Aw man, those guys, now they’re just front-loading shows, they’re not going to be topical anymore.’ It’s like, you seriously think we went and made a bunch of shows ahead of time, and we’re, like, banking them for later? So we just made something up, and were like, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ And we’re not doing any of that.’”

“No politics,” Stone joked. “None. None of that shit.”

So don’t expect next Thursday’s episode to focus on Randy’s ketamine addiction or Astro-Diddy.