South Park Star’s Son Breaks Silence on Why His Dad Actually Quit
South Park has been making headlines recently, and for its entire existence to be completely honest.
The show was recently in the news after its 27th season release was delayed, something the show's writers and producers critiqued earlier in July 2025.
‘This merger is a s--tshow and it’s f--king up South Park. We are at the studio working on new episodes and we hope the fans get to see them somehow," the Trey Parker and Matt Stone said.
But now the show is making waves for something that happened more than 15 years before its latest season.
Longtime South Park fans remember the character Chef, otherwise known as Jerome McElroy, who played the role of a cafeteria worker giving advice to the main characters of the show, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick.
But that ended in 2006, when Chef quit.
Much to fans' dismay, Isaac Hayes, who played the voice of Chef was announced to have quit the show in March 2006 following episodes that depicts scientology's belief system, so accurately that the Church of Scientology still has not actually rebutted the depiction, according to Business Insider.
People at the time believed Hayes, who was a member of the Church of Scientology (so is Tom Cruise), quit because he didn't like the way the show portrayed the religion.
Stone back in 2016 even told The Hollywood Reporter that Hayes asked that the episode be pulled.
"When we did the Scientology episode, [Isaac Hayes, who was a Scientologist] came over, and I sat with him. It was like a day or two after, and it was pretty obvious from the conversation that somebody had sent him to ask us to pull the episode. It had already gone on the air, and we didn’t tell him because we didn’t want him to be held accountable," Stone said. "Plausible deniability.”
But now, Hayes' son, Isaac Hayes III, has broken the silence on why his dad actually quit the show, and he says it wasn't actually his dad's own decision to do so.
"My dad did not quit South Park. Scientology did," he said in a post on Facebook.
His dad suffered a stroke in 2005, degrading his health to the point that he "was not in any condition to resign from anything," Hayes III added.
"The truth is, someone else within his Scientology circle made that decision and quit the show for him," he continued. "He loved being the voice of Chef. He loved the character. He loved connecting with fans. He would joke with people who recognized his voice and he truly enjoyed being part of the show."
Hayes was never offended by the satire, his son said, arguing the narrative that he quit because he was offended was offered by someone else, and Hayes "never got to speak for himself because his health robbed him of that chance."
"So now I am speaking for him," Hayes said. "He did not leave South Park willingly. He was forced out by illness and by people who did not have his best interest at heart.
"This is for anyone who loved Chef. This is for anyone who admired my father’s work. This is the truth about what really happened."