The Problem with Apu

By the beginning of 2020, Hank Azaria had stepped down from the role of Apu. Later that year the producers of the The Simpsons (1989) declared that white actors will not longer voice non-white characters.

In a March 2020 interview with Dave Davies on the National Public Radio, Hank Azaria credited Hari Kondabolu with introducing him to the idea that his performance as Apu was problematic, though it took him several years to come around to feeling the same way about it: "I had been doing that voice for about 25, 27 years before I really heard anybody express upset with it. And one of the first things that happened was that comedian Hari Kondabolu actually tweeted at me a link to a performance he did on a late-night comedy show where he did a routine about how much he resented the voice of Apu and the character of Apu or things about it, anyway. And he said ... the voice sounded like a white guy doing an impression of another white guy who was making fun of his father. And, you know, that was really kind of the first I'd heard of that kind of upset and bristling over the role. And then not long after that, I got reached out to by a reporter, a writer named Mallika Rao, who was doing an article for the Huffington Post.... I talked to her about it, and we did a little bit of a deeper dive.... And my first reaction ... not that I wasn't taking it seriously, but I kind of got pretty defensive and bristled, and I looked at it from much more of a comedy perspective--like, you know, we make fun everybody at The Simpsons and, you know, where does this kind of thing end if you're going to, you know, have me not do the voice of this character? And I got pretty defensive about it. And then over time, as I realized the criticism wasn't just Hari or a comedy routine but was really shared by many people in the Indian community in this country and South Asian community, I started taking a look at it. And what I realized was, over time, after a lot of soul searching and doing workshops and reading and talking to people, was that I had a blind spot or two when it came to this character...I based the voice of Apu--I was imitating a lot of convenience store clerks that I heard, but it was also based on a Peter Sellers voice. Peter Sellers did a movie called "The Party." I think it was in 1966--where he played an Indian actor. And he's doing a pretty thick Indian accent in brownface. To me, you know, there I am--I saw this movie, and I'm a teenager, OK? I'm an aspiring mimic and comedic voice actor. And to me, there was--and I worshiped Peter Sellers. I thought he was a genius and hilarious. And to me, I didn't distinguish between his, you know, silly French Detective Clouseau accent from The Pink Panther movies or his weird German Dr. Strangelove accent in Dr. Strangelove. So I mean, that's a blind spot. That's in the great show business tradition of, we make fun of everybody, and everybody's fair game, and that's fair enough. But the character had unintended consequences for people--kids growing up in this country, Indian and South Asian kids growing up in this country had to live with that character and be called Apu in ways they didn't appreciate. And that was a lot of my journey with that character, and it took some years to figure it out, for me." In January 2020, Azaria had announced that he would no longer perform the voice of Apu.

Before the dislike button was hidden on YouTube, this film's trailer had a ratio of 86.11%, the lowest of any trailer for a documentary by far.

[Brain Dump: The Apu That I Know (2018)], a rebuttal of this documentary ended up having over four times as many views on YouTube than the actual trailer for the documentary. Another rebuttal, a stand up special [Akaash Singh: Bring Back Apu (2022)] ended up having over twice as many views.

Filming for The Problem with Apu began in April 2016.