One of the longest-running animated series is Comedy Central's South Park, which is gearing up for its 24th season this year. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been delivering fans the same raunchy and thought-provoking satire for more than two decades, bringing characters such as Cartman, Kenny, Randy, Mr. Garrison, and Towelie to life.
What many fans may not realize is that the voice of Towelie, the pot-smoking mascot who has been a resident of South Park since the beginning, is actually performed by the show's Producer, Vernon Chatman. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Chatman about his new Adult Swim series, The Shivering Truth.
The Shivering Truth is a quarter-hour anthology series which explores dark and twisted daymares that all seem to tie together somehow. Delivered in stop-motion, the second season of the show is currently a welcome addition to Cartoon Network's mature programming block, nestled in comfortably between Rick and Morty and the visceral new series JJ Villard's Fairy Tales.
When we spoke with Chatman, we got the chance to pick his brain about his experience on South Park and what it is like to voice Towelie. Check out what he had to say below!
Joe: You’ve worked on South Park for the past two decades, what has it been like to grow and age alongside the children and residents as the years have passed?
Vernon Chatman: It’s really fun. We have a perspective on the world that is really fun to be a part of. Partially because of the world changes and the way that comedy changes, South Park is one of the few shows that has been grandfathered in outside of a lot of the cultural sniping and kind of shallow comedy fighting about punching up and punching down and what is satire and all these kinds of arguments that I find silly and absurd, and because South Park has played with these elements for so long, its interesting to see that stuff unfold and just kind of toss rocks at the insanity while also pushing our particular voice forward.
Joe: You provide the voice of Towlie. What inspires the approach you take with the character?
Vernon Chatman: It’s about 22 years of voice training. I had my larynx injected with liquid gold and I gargled with the blood of Mel Blanks and Paul Robeson which I have in vials. And then usually before we have to record Towelie I’ll meditate for about ten days straight until I can hover at least a couple of inches and then I go into the booth and let it rip!
Joe: What was your experience like playing a character who was pro-marijuana during a time when the nation was less accepting of it?
Vernon Chatman: It’s funny because I’ve never been a big pothead. You know, I never cared about any of that stuff, it all seemed very silly to me. And part of Towelie was both pot humor and the joke about how stupid and arbitrary and lazy pot humor is. So Towelie is the laziest joke in the world and that’s what a lot of pot humor is.
What do you think of these comments from Vernon Chatman? Be sure to check out the trailer for Season 2 of his newest show, The Shivering Truth, below!
The Shivering Truth is a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy.
Each episode is a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion -- in other words, it is the TRUTH (squared).
New episodes of The Shivering Truth air on Adult Swim every Sunday night at midnight.