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The full episode, in writing.
You know the Simpsons. You probably saw The Simpsons Movie. But here’s what almost nobody saw coming: the controversy that exploded around one supporting character, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, and how a decades-old running joke in the show became a lightning rod for debates about race, representation, and what it means to laugh at a stereotype.
In 2007, The Simpsons Movie hit theaters worldwide, earning $536.4 million on a $75 million budget. It was the eighth-highest-grossing film of that year and, at the time, the highest-grossing movie ever based on an animated TV series. The cast included all the familiar voices: Dan Castellaneta as Homer, Julie Kavner as Marge, Nancy Cartwright as Bart, Yeardley Smith as Lisa, and Hank Azaria voicing, among many others, Apu.
But Apu wasn’t just another Springfield face. For years, he’d been voiced by Azaria using a stereotypical Indian accent. And for a long time, that stereotype mostly got a pass—even fans of Indian or South Asian heritage often saw Apu as, if not perfect, at least a rare spot of representation on TV.
The real pressure started to build a decade after the movie, when comedian Hari Kondabolu released his 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu. Kondabolu grew up loving The Simpsons, but as he put it, “Apu was the only Indian we had on TV at all so I was happy for any representation as a kid.” That changed as he got older. He realized the character was, in his words, “a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.” He compared the performance to minstrelsy, and in interviews, he said Apu’s accent was an example of “brownface”—a point Whoopi Goldberg, who appears in the documentary, echoes.
In the film, Kondabolu talks not just to comedians and actors like Aziz Ansari and Kal Penn, but to regular people who grew up hearing “Thank you, come again!” from strangers, or being called “Apu” at school because of their heritage. He even says that when he brought up his issues with Apu in the writers’ room of the TV show Totally Biased in 2012, his boss W. Kamau Bell told him to write it into a stand-up routine—or get fired.
The documentary got a lot of attention, but it also sparked a huge backlash. Some viewers, including many Indian fans, pushed back, saying they liked Apu and didn’t see him as racist. In one Guardian article, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote, “Don’t get rid of Apu. He’s a hero to many of us.” Others, like Kal Penn, said the character ruined the show for them.
Meanwhile, Kondabolu tried to get Hank Azaria to appear in the film. Azaria declined, worried his words would be edited out of context. He later agreed to do a mediated interview, then backed out again.
The documentary itself landed with critics. Rotten Tomatoes gave The Problem with Apu a 90% approval rating, with an average score of 8.3 out of 10. Metacritic summarized it with a score of 77 out of 100. Daniel Fienberg at The Hollywood Reporter praised the documentary’s clarity, while others, like Justin Charity at The Ringer, said the focus on Azaria distracted from bigger questions about the future of the character.
The Simpsons’ response? In April 2018, the show aired an episode called “No Good Read Goes Unpunished,” where Lisa looks at a picture of Apu and says, “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive, is now politically incorrect. What can you do?” Kondabolu tweeted his disappointment, arguing the show had reduced his whole message to a joke about political correctness.
Matt Groening, the show’s creator, didn’t back down in interviews, telling USA Today, “I think it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended.” Mike Reiss, a longtime Simpsons writer and producer, called Kondabolu’s documentary “a nasty little documentary,” and said that taunting Indian children about Apu wasn’t racism, it was “kids being dicks.”
But not everyone at The Simpsons was on the same page. In April 2018, Hank Azaria went on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and said he’d be “perfectly willing to step aside” from voicing Apu. He said, “The most important thing is to listen to Indian people and their experience with it. I really want to see Indian, South Asian writers in the writers’ room, genuinely informing whichever direction this character takes.” Kondabolu welcomed Azaria’s statement, but pointed out that he’d been receiving death threats since the film’s release, and wanted more public acknowledgment.
In January 2020, Azaria officially announced he would no longer voice Apu—a role he’d held since 1990. In June 2020, following the George Floyd protests, producers said The Simpsons would no longer have white actors voice non-white characters at all. This was a major shift for a show that had resisted criticism for decades.
The controversy didn’t just stay inside the Simpsons’ world. In 2018, South Park aired an episode called “The Problem with a Poo,” lampooning both the documentary and its critique of Apu. The episode ended with the hashtag #cancelthesimpsons. Some viewers thought South Park was siding with Kondabolu, but creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said the episode was actually a jab at the documentary and that they were defending their friends on The Simpsons. Al Jean, Simpsons showrunner, later said the episode was “actually in favor of us saying people are too critical.”
The Simpsons had always prided itself on satirizing everyone, but the Apu debate forced the writers and cast to think about where the line really is between laughing with and laughing at.
And here’s the twist you might not expect: when Azaria publicly apologized for “racism, my participation in racism, or at least in a racist practice, as it relates to show business,” not everyone cheered. Mellini Kantayya, an actress and writer, wrote in The Washington Post that the apology was “cold comfort,” but it still made her cry because it meant someone finally recognized the real pain caused by years of casual racism on TV.
And the biggest question left hanging: If a show as powerful and beloved as The Simpsons can change because of one character, one comedian, and one film, what’s next for every other “laugh” we thought was harmless?