Hank Azaria, 59, opened up about voicing “The Simpsons” Apu Nahasapeemapetilon as a white man on the latest episode of NPR’s podcast “Code Switch.”
Apu is a recurring Indian-American character in the show who runs the Kwik-E-Mart convenience store, which often keeps him from his wife and eight children.
Azaria was first publicly called out in 2017 when comedian Hari Kondabolu, who’s of Indian descent, expressed his anger over the character and Hollywood’s decadeslong depictions of South Asians in the documentary “The Problem With Apu.”
Azaria, who no longer voices Apu, and Kondabolu, 40, finally sat down and had their first public conversation to address the controversy in a podcast episode titled “The Fallout of a Callout.”
Kondabolu described Azaria’s voicing of Apu as “a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.”
“If I saw Hank Azaria do that voice at a party, I would kick the s–t out of him,” he said.
Both Azaria and Kondabolu did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
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In 1989, Azaria was in his 20s when he first started voicing characters on the prime-time cartoon show. He recounted how he became the voice of Apu after one of the producers casually asked if he would try an Indian accent.
“The only really Indian accent that I had context for, apart from guys who worked at the 7-Eleven that I was near in LA, was Peter Sellers in ‘The Party,’ ” he admitted. “It was an homage to that, you know, one of my heroes.”
Adding to the issue, Sellers, a white man, starred as Hrundi V. Bakshi in brownface in that 1968 film.
The popular voice actor acknowledged that he didn’t believe Apu was actually harmful when criticism first bubbled up. But after he watched Kondabolu’s “The Problem With Apu,” he realized that he had “hindered” and made the “path harder” for performers that he admires.
He also confessed that he was “afraid” to talk to Kondabolu about the issue and dodged his requests to be a part of the documentary.
“I was really freaked out,” Azaria told Kondabolu. “You know, you’re a comedian, and some of your stuff is gotcha, you know, and has bite to it, as well it should. It’s hilarious and it makes good points. Being on the other end of that really, really scared me, you know?
“I don’t know if I would have felt safe to have the conversation privately, let alone roll them, you know, we’re going to record it,” Azaria said.
But after years of self-reflection and digging into the controversy, Azaria admitted that he now finds his casting “embarrassing” and acknowledged how his character fed into “the broader dehumanization of Desi people in the United States.”
He claimed that he didn’t understand the extent of the issue until he realized that “Apu had become a slur.” He had heard about a Middle Eastern man who was called Apu as he was being attacked in his store.
“I helped to create a pretty marginalizing, dehumanizing stereotype,” he conceded.
This was something that Kondabolu was already aware of. Kondabolu had worked at the Queens District Attorney’s Hate Crimes Bureau during college after 9/11. He often read reports involving Apu and his catchphrase, “Thank you, come again.”
The candid conversation between the two comedians brought the topic to a full circle moment after much of Kondabolu’s documentary centered around this desire to speak with Azaria.
Although the recent “Code Switch” episode was the first public conversation between Azaria and Kondabolu, it wasn’t the first time that the white comedian has apologized for his previous role.
Azaria addressed the controversy surrounding his playing the character on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in 2018.
“It’s come to my attention more and more over the past couple years,” he said.
“The idea that anyone young or old, past or present, being bullied based on Apu really makes me sad,” he continued. “It certainly was not my intention. I wanted to bring joy and laughter to people.”
Since Azaria stopped voicing the character, Apu has been mostly sidelined from the longtime show.
