Brooke Shields calls out ‘South Park’ creators over working conditions at Casa Bonita in Denver

Only in Colorado does a labor dispute involve cliff divers, sopapillas and Brooke Shields sneaking into a restaurant under an alias.

Brooke Shields, who serves as president of the Actors’ Equity Association, revealed this week that she booked a reservation at Casa Bonita in March under a fake name and showed up unannounced to deliver a letter to management demanding better wages and safety protections for the roughly 80 performers who work at the Lakewood restaurant. She told CNN it was “slightly an ambush” — noting that the 52,000-square-foot restaurant is so massive “it took a while for management to realize we were there.” South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who bought Colorado’s most famous pink building out of bankruptcy in 2021 and spent $40 million renovating it, have not publicly responded. “It’s just silence, radio silence,” Shields told CNN.

The dispute centers on the performers who make Casa Bonita more than a restaurant — the cliff divers, puppeteers, roaming characters, mariachi musicians and costumed entertainers who turn a Mexican dinner into a theme park experience. The union, which the performers voted to join in December 2024, is seeking higher pay, inclusion in the tip pool and safer working conditions. Performers have alleged hypothermia and chlorine toxicity from the diving pool, and costumed characters have reported being sexually grabbed by patrons. In October, the restaurant eliminated roaming characters like Amazon Annie and Black Bart, prompting an unfair labor practice complaint. Actors’ Equity has filed at least seven labor complaints against Casa Bonita with the National Labor Relations Board in the past year.

Westword called it “the kind of star-vs-star battle that Hollywood loves” — the woman who starred in “Blue Lagoon” and “Suddenly Susan” going toe-to-toe with the guys who created Cartman and killed Kenny. Parker himself recently acknowledged the financial weight of the restaurant, telling an interviewer, “We would have been the richest comedians, but we decided to buy a restaurant. It was a cool thing to do, but a really dumb thing to do.” Stone estimated roughly 12,000 people visit Casa Bonita in a given week.

For a restaurant that just made Yelp’s list of the most outrageous in America and draws visitors from across the country, the national spotlight is now on the people behind the waterfall — and whether the guys who made South Park will sit down at the table.