It’s not uncommon for famous people to get parodied on animated programs in a less-than-flattering way. “South Park” does it all the time, and while “The Simpsons” oftentimes gets real-life celebrities to voice themselves as guests, there are times when they change the celeb’s name and have someone else do their voice, usually if the portrayal is an outright parody of the person. (See: Rainier Wolfcastle and Dreaderick Tatum standing in respectively for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Tyson in multiple episodes.) Then you’ve got MTV’s “Celebrity Deathmatch,” which originally ran from 1998 to 2002. For the younger readers out there, the show can be best described as WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” meets “Mortal Kombat,” but with claymation versions of celebrities taking part in violently over-the-top in-ring battles.

Advertisement

While many celebrities parodied on the above shows take it on the chin, there are some who can’t help but get offended by their portrayals. And when it came to “Celebrity Deathmatch,” singer-actor Jennifer Lopez was among those who were unhappy with how the series depicted them, as revealed in an Animation World Network blog post from “Celebrity Deathmatch” creator Eric Fogel. He did, however, clarify that she wasn’t upset with the episode for the reasons you might be expecting.

The “Celebrity Deathmatch” episode in question — the season 2 premiere — features Jennifer Lopez going head-to-head against country music legend Dolly Parton in what Eric Fogel described as a “battle of ‘T vs. A.'” It’s pretty much standard “Celebrity Deathmatch” fare, with both women literally using their defining (and exaggerated) physical assets against each other and talking trash on the side. But as Fogel related in his blog post, JLo primarily had an issue with the work put in by her voice actor, Socorro Santiago, who’s also provided voices for animated shows like “Dora the Explorer” and video games such as “True Crime: New York City.”

Advertisement

“It wasn’t the fact that we gave Jennifer a set of massive, super enhanced bionic buttocks,” Fogel wrote. “Or the fact she was nearly smothered to death by Dolly’s equally egregious bionically enhanced boobs. No, turns out it was the voice actress we cast. Apparently the singer/songwriter/former American Idol judge thought the actress sounded nothing like her. Who knew J-Lo was such a stickler for realism?”

That all said, Lopez wasn’t angry to the point that she took legal action against “Celebrity Deathmatch,” its creator, or MTV. In fact, Fogel stressed that none of the celebrities lampooned on the series — at least as far as he knows — filed lawsuits against him or the network.

“Celebrity Deathmatch” was certainly not the only animated (or claymation) series that purportedly drew JLo’s ire. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the “South Park” season 7 episode “Fat Butt and Pancake Head,” where Eric Cartman (voiced by Trey Parker) spends most of the runtime putting on a bizarre and racially insensitive ventriloquist act with a Jennifer Lopez (or should we say, “Hennifer Hlopez”) hand puppet, much to his friends’ bewilderment and annoyance. Oh, and Cartman-as-Lopez also records a song about tacos and burritos while at it.

Advertisement

All this makes for one of the more memorable celebrity moments on “South Park,” but as series co-creator Parker alleged in the season 7 DVD commentary, some friends told him that Lopez was definitely not a fan of “Fat Butt and Pancake Head,” especially when production assistants on a film she was working on would imitate lines from the episode. “She got so mad and had to fire people,” Parker recalled (via YouTube). “But she kept hearing it in the distance.”

It’s not clear whether Lopez feels the same way more than two decades later about adult animated shows painting her in a satirical light. But as “Celebrity Deathmatch” and “South Park” have suggested, at the time, she didn’t take kindly to on-screen parodies.

Advertisement