Despite the Two-Week Buffer, ‘South Park’ Actors Are Still Pulling Tuesday All-Nighters

South Park returns tonight with a brand new episode that will tackle Donald Trump’s disturbing military occupation of Washington, D.C., as seen through the eyes of an anthropomorphic towel.

And judging from Randy’s sweatshirt, Tegridy Farms may now be a tech company?

This will be the first episode to air since August 6th’s “Got a Nut,” which made headlines for its depiction of Homeland Security Secretary, and famed puppy murderer, Kristi Noem. To the confusion and annoyance of many, this season’s batch of episodes have, so far, aired every other week, prompting accusations that Paramount been toying with the schedule in order to keep South Park fans subscribed to their streaming service for as long as humanly possible. 

Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, South Park will continue to release new episodes on a bi-weekly basis until at least September 17th, although they clarified that neither Comedy Central nor creators Trey Parker on Matt Stone have “commented on the schedule shifts.” 

The outlet also speculated that Parker and Stone could be “using the extra time to edge away from the show’s usual breakneck six-day production schedule, and give themselves more breathing room to make episodes at a time when the show is under perhaps unprecedented scrutiny and enjoying a surge of viewership.”

But that doesn’t actually appear to be the case. 

Even though they’ve had two weeks to craft the latest episode, Parker and Stone seemingly haven’t abandoned their anxiety-inducing approach to making South Park. April Stewart, who voices a number of the show’s female characters — including Wendy Testaburger, Liane Cartman and Sharon Marsh — recently shared on social media that she just had to pull “another all-nighter” for South Park. 

“Tuesdays at South Park go LATE!” reads a caption in a video in which Stewart seemingly visits the show’s offices around noon, and is still recording dialogue for Wednesday’s show at one o’clock in the morning in her home recording booth.

Similarly, the day that “Got a Nut” aired, Stewart revealed that she had been up until midnight recording her lines, but was laughing her ass off.

Of course, this is just par for the course when it comes to South Park. As Stewart told Cracked’s Brian VanHooker, there have been times when she’s been asked to record lines “the morning of the day (the episode) hits the air — just hours before.” And her co-star Mona Marshall noted that the actors’ call times are “anywhere from 9 to 11 p.m.”

So the good news is that South Park likely hasn’t changed their behind-the-scenes approach, but that may just add more weight to the “Paramount+ is super-desperate for subscribers” theory.