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Joe Jonas isn’t losing sleep over South Park’s satire of him and his brothers.
In a preview for the June 3 episode of Josh Scherer’s Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals podcast, the Camp Rock alum discussed the 2009 South Park episode that dragged him and his musician brothers, Kevin Jonas and Nick Jonas, for wearing purity rings.
The band wore them as a symbol of their commitment to wait to have sex, and the cartoon skewered them for it.
Scherer brought up the first time he was “ever exposed” to Joe, 35, was “watching an animated Mickey Mouse beat the s— out of you for refusing to wear a purity ring.”
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“Sorry, Mickey,” Joe said before reflecting on the impact of the episode aptly titled “The Ring,” which featured the brothers — in cartoon form and wearing purity rings — teeing up to perform in a 3D concert experience (not unlike the 2009 movie released by Disney).
Kenny and his girlfriend wear purity rings, inspired by the Jonas Brothers, which Cartman, Kyle and Stan try to tell an angry Mickey Mouse that the accessory is “killing” him. The episode portrays the rings are a marketing move by Disney to sell sex to young girls.
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Before the concert, an agitated Mickey Mouse exposes his secret plot to the audience in an expletive-filled rant, confirming the South Park characters’ suspicions. Cartoon Joe also calls the ring a “nice Christian symbol” used for “profit gain.”
“I think I was the only brother that loved it,” he said, flattered by the parody. “Our skin was not as thick back then.”
“I thought it was hilarious, because I watched South Park, and I was like, ‘This is so funny, I know what they’re doing, they make fun of everyone!’ ”
“To be made fun of by a comic is usually a sign that they give a s—, and they care, and it’s funny.” Joe said he thought that the adult cartoon was “going for” the Jonas Brothers because of “the idea of what it is.”
He also called it “an honor to get my ass kicked by Mickey.” “I think it’s one of my favorite episodes. And later on, now, we just laugh. We love that. I think it’s so great. Definitely a claim-to-fame for me.”
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The brothers’ father Kevin Sr. “was not pleased,” when the episode came out, per Ashley Spencer’s book Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire.
Former Disney Channel president Anne Sweeney, meanwhile, saw things differently. “We were absolutely thrilled because it meant that the rest of entertainment actually noticed us,” she said in Disney High. “I thought it was funny.”
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Joe made fun of the purity rings on TikTok in 2023 and their visibility, posting a video of him lip-synching to a line said by Russell Crowe in the 2020 movie Unhinged. “I don’t even think you really know what a bad day is,” he mouthed.
“When someone’s complaining to me but they never had to wear a piece of jewelry that let everybody know that they’re a virgin,” the text over the video read.
