The Simpsons was somewhat slow to embrace the trend of animation programs, moving away from the fact that white actors vote for non-white characters, to the point that the program initially actively pushed back against the shift, but – to its credit – the voice actor Hank Azaria faster of his Simpsons colleagues to admit the fact that he did something wrong and offensive by voting Apu (as underlined in Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The problem with Apu). Azaria decides to stop voting for Apu long before it became public policy at Simpsons Headquarters, and he has since been open about the fact that he wants to be held responsible for the damage he has caused by interpreting the character.
Recently during an appearance on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s Armchair expert podcast (via The Hollywood ReporterAzaria said he was still investigating the negative impact of Apu’s perception of Indians in the United States, and that he had met Indian-American children who had never seen an episode of The Simpsons but still know about Apu. “It’s practically a hoax at this point,” he says, adding that a 17-year-old child in particular tearfully asked him to remind writers that “what they do matters and what consequences people’s lives have.” . ‘
Azaria seems to acknowledge the very important role he played in spreading the racist stereotyping of which Apu was a part, and it sounds like he’s going out of his way to at least apologize for it and listen to people’s concerns about it. . live now. “Part of me feels that I need to go to every Indian person in this country and personally apologize,” he said on the podcast. “And sometimes, too.” Meanwhile on The Simpsons, Apu has never been recreated (unlike some of the black characters previously voiced by white men, such as with Kevin Michael Richardson replacing Harry Shearer as Dr. Hibbert).