Unlike The Simpsons and Family Guy, South Park has never been very welcoming to celebrity guests. And to be fair, the ever-growing list of famous people that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have brutally mocked over the show’s beginning in 1997 likely hasn’t left many willing to collaborate, even in good fun. A select few have shown up as themselves, like Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk and YouTuber PewDiePie, but they’re few and far between—and that’s probably for the better. Even rarer are the stars who dropped in to voice a random character once in the early years of the show without anybody stopping to think, “Am I dreaming, or was that the guy from Law & Order doing Robert De Niro just now?” Without further ado, here are a few voice cameos that may have slipped under your radar…
4. Norman Lear
Legendary producer and All in the Family creator Norman Lear served as a consultant on Season 7 of South Park and, in the process, provided the voice of Benjamin Franklin in “I’m a Little Bit Country,” the series’s 100th episode. Franklin appears in a self-induced flashback during which Cartman ponders what the Founding Fathers would think of the Iraq War. His suggestion? Go to war, but act like you don’t want to. Lear was an avid South Park fan, and since his work influenced Parker and Stone, there was clearly mutual admiration, so much so that Lear officiated Trey Parker’s first wedding in 2006 and was one of their oldest celebrity fans when he died in 2023 at 101.
3. Natasha Henstridge
One of the earliest guest appearances in South Park history came courtesy of actress Natasha Henstridge—or as she’s referred to in the credits, “The Chick From Species.” Henstridge holds the distinction of being the first celeb to appear on the show without playing themself or an animal. In the Season 1 episode “Tom’s Rhinoplasty,” she plays Ms. Ellen, the new substitute teacher at South Park Elementary. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny quickly develop crushes on her, not realizing she’s a lesbian (or what a lesbian is, for that matter). Despite her lack of interest in dating little boys, Stan’s obsession with Ms. Ellen is enough justification for his girlfriend Wendy to hatch a plan to get rid of her for good. We won’t give the ending away completely, but it involves Iraqi soldiers and “The Chick From Species” never appearing in the credits again.
2. Richard Belzer
Stand-up comedian and cop-playing enthusiast Richard Belzer also appeared on South Park on “The Tooth Fairy’s Tats 2000,” the first episode of the fourth season. Belzer voices the character Loogie, a mafioso-looking fourth grader who somehow finds the time to run his own Italian restaurant, plus a tooth-planting racket on the side. In a nutshell, his gang puts teeth under kids’ pillows for the Tooth Fairy and collects the money their parents give them in exchange. Belzer only voiced the character just once, but he’s appeared in the background in several episodes since.
1. Jennifer Aniston
Finally, we’ve got Leprechaun’s own Jennifer Aniston, smack in the middle of her run as Rachel Green on Friends. In Season 3’s “Rainforest Shmainforest,” Aniston plays Ms. Stevens, a choir teacher looking to recruit children from South Park Elementary to be part of her “Getting Gay With Kids” tour of the Costa Rican rainforest. During the tour, Miss Stevens is determined to change Cartman’s negative views on the subject, and predictably fails pretty damn miserably. This eventually culminates in her views being changed after an indigenous tribe kidnaps her and the kids. Like Richard Belzer, Aniston only voiced Ms. Stevens once, but the character later appeared in a non-speaking role.
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