Hari Kondabolu: Last News

The Simpsons star Harry Shearer has suggested that the recasting of Dr Hibbert has “affected” his former character.The actor was replaced in the role by Kevin Richardson in 2021, after the long-running animated sitcom decided the year before that white actors would no longer voice non-white roles in the series.Shearer previously voiced Hibbert, who is Black, from the show’s inception, and in a new interview with The Times reflected on the change.“Folk say the show has become woke in recent years and one of my characters has been affected,” he said. “I voiced the Black physician, Dr Hibbert, who I based on Bill Cosby.

EXCLUSIVE: MSNBC Films has unveiled its spring and summer slate including a Dave Eggers documentary about book-banning.

beloved animated series’ longest-running gags. “Times have changed,” Homer Simpson announces to wife Marge in Episode 3 of the current batch, referencing the portly patriarch’s penchant for strangling son Bart.Making its debut on Fox in late 1989, cartoonist Matt Groening’s groundbreaking show was controversial from the start — partly for the reoccuring scenes where a rage-filled Homer works out his frustration over Bart’s behavior by squeezing him tightly around the neck, causing the boy’s eyes to bulge out.Finally, in the recent episode, titled “McMansion & Wife,” the rotund — and apparently, reformed — lead character announces he’s moved on from the torturous tactic during a tête-à-tête with a new neighbor named Thayer, The Independent reported.When Homer goes to shake hands with Thayer, the man comments on his firm grip.

The Simpsons being “the bane of my life”, owing to the fuelling of racial stereotypes.The Indian actress said in a new interview that Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu’s “exaggerated” Indian accent would lead people to question why hers wasn’t as pronounced.Chopra Jonas, who is married to Jonas Brothers‘ Nick Jonas, made a cameo in the long-running cartoon in an episode that showed the pair getting married.She said that the feature was ironic, given how the cartoon impacted her teenaged years growing up in the US.“To be on The Simpsons in my wedding dress was really fun and ironic considering Apu was the bane of my life when I was growing up,” she told British Vogue as she looked back at some of her key Instagram photos.“Everybody kept asking why don’t I speak like Apu [Nahasapeemapetilon], why my accent wasn’t like Apu?”She added, “Apu had a really exaggerated Indian accent as we all know now,” before noting that the cameo was “bittersweet and funny because obviously The Simpsons are an iconic part of most of our childhoods”.Chopra Jonas also noted the “irony of me in an Indian dress marrying a white guy”.The character of Apu was previously voiced by American actor Hank Azaria.In 2021, he apologised on Dax Shepherd’s Armchair Expert podcast for his longtime portrayal of Apu while also acknowledging the show’s participation in “structural racism”.Four years previously, widespread calls for Azaria to stop voicing Apu began, following Hari Kondabolu’s criticism of the portrayal of the character in his documentary The Problem With Apu.Elsewhere in Armchair Expert, Azaria called for greater and more diverse racial and ethnic representation in entertainment.“If it’s an Indian character or a Latinx character or a Black character, please

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.