The Simpsons took nine years to do the obvious thing with Apu
Apu finally spoke again on Sunday, with a new voice actor. The fix took one casting announcement; the wait for it took a quarter of the show's lifetime.
Apu Nahasapeemapetilon returned to The Simpsons in "Treehouse of Horror Presents: The Revengening," which aired October 18 on Fox, and for the first time he is not voiced by Hank Azaria. The new Apu is Sunil Malhotra, a veteran voice actor whose credits include The Legend of Korra, with Janina Gavankar taking over Manjula from Tress MacNeille.
The gap this closes is longer than most shows run. Apu's last spoken line aired in "The Serfsons" in October 2017 — the same year Hari Kondabolu's documentary The Problem with Apu put the character, and Azaria's performance of him, at the center of a fight about stereotypes. Azaria announced he was stepping away from the role in January 2020, and by 2021 he was publicly apologizing for it; the show responded by keeping Apu on screen but mute, a background extra in his own hometown, for nine years.
According to The Table Read, the return episode leans into that history on purpose: Springfield residents ignore Apu and leave him stranded, characters joke about "internal conversations" that went nowhere, and Homer closes the loop by admitting it's been years since anyone really talked to him. Showrunner Matt Selman says the team wanted Apu to evolve within Springfield's world, and production sources say this is not a one-off — Apu and his family are expected back regularly.
The split, in two comments
The fan reaction divided along exactly the line you'd predict. From the thread on r/entertainment:
"It's not the same, he doesn't sound like Apu."
— a commenter on r/entertainment
And the other camp, in the same thread:
"I always like Apu, one of my favorite characters in the Simpsons. It is a good thing he's back, it is a good thing he's played by an Indian actor."
— a commenter on r/entertainment
Both reactions are reasonable, and only one of them was avoidable. Of course he doesn't sound like Azaria's Apu — that was the point of recasting. The complaint that lands is the other one, the one nobody in the thread is making directly: this exact solution was available the whole time.
The timeline makes the case
- 2017: The Problem with Apu comes out. Apu goes silent.
- January 2020: Azaria formally steps away from the role.
- June 2020: 20th Television Animation commits to casting actors of color to voice characters matching their backgrounds. The Simpsons recasts Dr. Hibbert within months.
- 2020–2026: Apu stands in the background of Springfield, visible and voiceless.
- October 18, 2026: Malhotra debuts, in an episode written around how long everyone ignored the character.
Dr. Hibbert got his new voice within a year of the studio's 2020 casting policy. Apu, the character the policy was practically written about, waited six more.
Malhotra, notably, has said he turned down earlier roles that required stereotypical portrayals, and took this one after meeting with Selman and co-executive producer Cesar Mazariegos. That's the version of Apu worth having: a specific character played by someone invested in him, instead of a problem the show hoped would stop being asked about if he just stood quietly by the Squishee machine. The recasting was right in 2026, and it would have been right in 2019 — the only thing the nine years bought was a reunion episode about how awkward the silence got.
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