Chris Hansen Laughs Off His Portrayal in South Park: ‘You Better Have Thick Skin in This Business’

Chris Hansen has no hard feelings over his portrayal in an episode of South Park, the journalist said on a podcast this week.

Hansen sat down with Sgt. Sean “Sticks” Larkin for the Thursday episode of their podcast Coptales & Cocktails.

Larkin turned the conversation toward South Park, saying, “I’m sure you’ve seen it but the South Park episode –”

“Oh yeah,” Hansen replied. “When the South Park episode came out I was in San Francisco on an unrelated assignment and one of my agents from William Morris text me and said ‘South Park is doing you tonight, it’s pretty funny.’ Now I had three hours before I could see it because of the time change and twenty minutes later he sends another text. ‘It’s turned a little dark.'”

“It’s South Park, man!” Larkin laughed.

Hansen continued, “So I watch it and I though it was funny. My older boys at the time were in high school and they go to high school on the East Coast with kids who’s dads do a lot of cool stuff. They run networks, they build ships and sailing yachts. They’re titans of Wall Street. Having a dad on television wasn’t necessarily a big deal. But South Park!”

“When you hit South Park!” Larkin added.

“When Chris Hansen was parodied on South Park, that was a big deal. Suddenly, I was cool!” Hansen said. “Look, they make fun and they do it in an intelligent, biting way. I had absolutely no issue with it whatsoever. Look, if you want to make fun of me, great. If it brings attention to a very important topic and continues the dialogue and promotes my work — even better.”

“I have very thick skin,” Hansen added. “In a business where you expose a lot of bad guys and in an area where there is the ability to create misinformation campaigns and attack you back, you better have thick skin in this business.”

Listen via Coptales and Cocktails.