The Simpsons he was a bit slow to embrace the trend of animated shows moving away from having white actors expressing non-white characters, to the point that the show actively backtracked on change initially, however, according to his credit. , voice actor Hank Azaria was faster than some of his Simpsons mates to acknowledge the fact that he was doing something wrong and offensive by expressing Apu (as Hari Kondabolu’s documentary points out The problem with Apu). Azaria decided that she would stop giving voice to Apu long before it had publicly become the official policy of Simpsons HQ, and has since been open to wanting to be responsible for the harm he caused by playing the character.
Recently, during an appearance on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman Armchair Expert podcast (via The Hollywood Reporter) Azaria said she continues to explore the negative impact Apu had on the perception of Indian people in the United States and that she met Indian-American children who have never seen any episodes of The Simpsons but I still know about Apu. “At this point it’s pretty much a joke,” he says, adding that a 17-year-old, in particular, had asked him to remind writers that “what they do is important and has ramifications in people’s lives.”
Azaria seems to recognize the central role she played in spreading the racist stereotypes of which Apu was a part, and she seems to strive to at least apologize to him and listen to people’s concerns about it. life now. “Part of me feels like I need to go to all the Indians in this country and apologize personally,” he said on the podcast. “And sometimes yes.” In the meantime, go ahead The Simpsons, Apu has never been reformed (unlike some of the black characters who were voiced by white men, such as Kevin Michael Richardson replacing Harry Shearer by Dr. Hibbert).