Hank Azaria opens up about voicing ‘dehumanizing’ Apu on ‘The Simpsons’

nypost.com:

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, 40, who’s of Indian descent, expressed his anger over the character and Hollywood’s decades-long depictions of South Asians in the documentary “The Problem with Apu.” Azaria, who no longer voices Apu, and Kondabolu 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 request to comment.In 1989, Azaria was in his 20s when he first started voicing characters on the adult 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.