Over 38 seasons of “The Simpsons,” the Halloween-themed “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have always been a vehicle for scary stories in their own right. On Sunday, the show surprised viewers with a major resurrection: Apu, the beloved Kwik-E-Mart operator who hadn’t been heard from for the better part of a decade, spoke again in Springfield.
He and his wife, Manjula, were back with a meaty plot – and the voices of real American Indian actors: Sunil Malhotra, a veteran voice artist, and Janina Gavankar (“The Morning Show”).
“Bringing Apu back feels like a recall. It’s truly his homecoming,” Malhotra and Gavankar said Sunday in a joint Instagram post.
Apu’s unexpected return is a surprising twist to a years-long conversation about how the character has represented a painful stereotype for some South Asian Americans. After a 2017 documentary by comedian Hari Kondabolu, “The Problem With Apu,” the character was largely exiled from the screen.
In “The Problem with Apu,” Kondabolu, a self-described fan of the Fox show, tried to process his ideas. He interviewed several South Asian celebrities, including Kal Penn, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Hasan Minhaj, about growing up with the character. They shared memories of being bullied and called them “Apu” as an insult. Adding to their view of Apu as a mere caricature was Hank Azaria, a white actor, voicing him.
With the full name Apu Nahasapeemapetilon Jr., he felt like the “foreigner forever, someone who represents Indians in the United States through this same type of being a convenience store owner, being a recent immigrant, with this heavy accent, being really limited in this kind of American identity,” says Bhoomi Thakore, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. Thakore notes that Kondabolu’s film created the impression that Apu was the only portrayal of an Indian character that most people knew when it came out in 1990.
Azaria retired after the documentary, continuing to voice other “Simpsons” characters, as Apu fell silent, only seen in the background. Kondabolu, however, had not called for Apu’s suspension. On Monday, he praised “The Simpsons” for “planning a sensible solution to all of this” and for hiring Malhotra and Gavankar.
“I am also proud of the public conversation about race and representation that my documentary started,” he told The Associated Press in an emailed statement. “Finally, I hope this will put an end to all the hate mail in multiple languages that has been sent my way over the past ten years.”
In a 2018 episode, “The Simpsons” responded to Kondabolu’s documentary by having Lisa Simpson lament how “something that started decades ago and was proposed and innocent is now politically incorrect. … What can you do?” The camera then panned to a framed photo of Apu. Some thought Goga was weak for not dealing directly with the controversy.
In an interview with the New York Times in 2020, Azaria, who had not voiced Apu in years, announced that he would be bowing out because “it just didn’t feel right. Later that year, in response to racial profiling shows, “The Simpsons” announced that it would no longer cast white voice actors as characters of color. The show then recasts two Black characters, Carl Carlson and Dr. Julius Hibbert, with Black actors.
Kondabolu had not spoken to “The Simpsons” producers about Apu’s return, he confirmed to the AP, “but I didn’t owe that.” And it looks like Apu is here to stay.
“We love this character and wanted to bring him back in a quick, Simpsons way that allowed him to evolve,” executive producer Matt Selman said in a statement. “We are excited by what Sunil has already brought to the role and look forward to seeing more of Apu in the future.”
A few weeks after “The Simpsons” responded to the documentary, the author and producer Amar Shah wrote a series of social media posts and then the Washington Post confronted why he felt mostly emotion towards Apu. When he watched Apu, he thought of his own Indian father working hard as a convenience store owner and how that shaped his childhood in Florida.
“Apu is a character even now that I would not like my children to see portrayed because they will see aspects of themselves and their own grandparents,” says Shah, reflecting on his 2018 piece. “I can totally empathize with someone from South Asia who has a different POV than me but this is my childhood. This is my story.”
After watching this last episode, Shah did not notice a big difference in Malhotra’s performance.
“Obviously, there’s a different voice, tenor, texture and all that. But, the character will always be there, his true humanity,” Shah says. “I think if they had introduced this change earlier, it would have been much better.
Apu is being revived amid a climate of rising anti-South Asian and Indian hatred. Stop AAPI Hate and other research groups have found that online use of racist slurs and threats against South Asians and Indians has jumped over the past few years.
Texas Railroad Commission candidate Bo French, a Republican, recently posted a photo of University of Texas South Asian students cheering at a football game and called them a “problem.” Just last week, a man was charged with planning a mass shooting at a Hindu temple outside of Chicago. Against that background, Shah welcomes the show’s careful approach to reassess the character.
“It’s great to see that the show has evolved over time and now, especially with the discrimination and, really, targeting of South Asians and Indian Americans recently — questioning our patriotism, our American identity and even whether we’re college football fans,” he says.
The return also coincides with much more representation of South Asian Americans, such as actor and presenter Mindy Kaling, and people who have broken barriers in office, such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
When Apu first appeared, says Shilpa Davé, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, it was one of the only consistent representations of South Asians on TV.
Now, she says, “South Asians have become part of the landscape from ‘Bridgerton’ to… ‘Never Have I Ever’ and there’s an abundance of different types of representation.”
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Associate journalist Mallika Sen added to the report.