Jennifer Lopez Hated Her ‘South Park’ Portrayal So Much She Had People Fired for Quoting It
Some celebrities take their insulting and endlessly quotable South Park parodies on the chin, owning the joke and choosing to interpret the imitation as flattery. Jenny from the Block ain’t one of them.
Jennifer Lopez’ hatred of South Park stretches back even before the very deliberately racist caricature performed by Cartman’s hand puppet in the Season Seven episode “Fat Butt and Pancake Head” became a household bit — and, after the episode took off, her hurt feelings even allegedly led to a handful of assistants losing their jobs.
To fully appreciate Lopez’ acrimony toward Trey Parker specifically, we must go back to the 2000 Grammy Awards when Lopez took the red carpet by storm wearing a green Versace silk chiffon dress with a virtually nonexistent neckline. To the star’s surprise, Lopez would find herself in a “Who wore it better?” competition mere months later when Parker showed up to the Academy Awards wearing a nearly-identical outfit and a wig full of luscious brunette locks.
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“When we saw Jennifer Lopez at a party, all Jennifer Lopez did was walk past me and push me,” Parker revealed of the aftermath of the dress in an interview years later. Though the South Park co-creator didn’t explicitly state that the shove led to one of their most infamous and memorable attacks on a celebrity to date, in 2003, the duo pushed back at Lopez in the aforementioned episode which saw Cartman’s hand-puppet sing “Taco-Flavored Kisses” while stealing both the singer’s record deal and her boyfriend (now husband) Ben Affleck. In a deliberately confusing turn of events, the puppet turns out to be a conman named Mitch Conner, but the ruse isn't revealed before J.Lo loses everything to a hand.
In the commentary track for the South Park Season Seven DVD release, Parker and Matt Stone discussed a rumor they heard about the fallout of “Taco-Flavored Kisses,” as the former explained, “I heard from some friends that were on a set of a Jennifer Lopez movie she was doing and they said that when she would walk by, some of the lower people like the PAs would say, ‘Oooh tacos, I love tacos…’” Unsurprisingly, the star didn’t take kindly to the mockery. “She got so mad and had to fire people,” Parker explained. “But she kept hearing it in the distance.”
Insulting your boss while she’s within earshot is a good way for anyone to get fired regardless of their industry — and if you’re quoting the hand that took her job, you kind of deserve to lose your own.
