Is Apu Still Featured on ‘The Simpsons'? Inside What Happened With the Character

There have been many long-running shows throughout the history of television, but very few can come close to the staying power of the Fox animated series The Simpsons.

Since its premiere back in 1989, The Simpsons has produced dozens of memorable characters and managed to strangely predict the future with numerous episodes.

Although still seen in the background occasionally on episodes of The Simpsons, the character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon has not been voiced by actor Hank Azaria since 2017 in the show’s 29th season premiere.

Up until that point, Apu was a fan-favorite character of the local Kwik-E-Mart that fans loved, however, critics labeled the depiction as problematic to those of Southeast Asian descent.

In the 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu, created and written by comedian Hari Kondabolu, he heavily criticized the Apu character as being a stereotype of South Asians, which many agreed with. Shortly after, Hank decided to stop voicing the character following online backlash.

The film further examines how Apu was the only figure of Indian heritage on mainstream U.S. television for a very long period of time, thus resulting in many Americans believing that all Indians acted and spoke like the character.

Additionally, The Problem with Apu also explores the negative stereotypes, racial microaggressions, and slurs against people of Indian and South Asian heritage.

After formally deciding in January 2020 that he would no longer voice Apu, Hank has discussed the situation multiple times, most recently in April 2025 in an interview with Pablo Torre from the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out.

"In order to answer that question, 'Do I keep doing the voice or not,' required a deep dive. It wasn't like, 'Well, let me take a week and look into this.' It was probably two or three years because we all froze at The Simpsons," Hank said. "We had no idea what to do. The character stopped saying anything, and it became a deep dive into, 'Well, is this racist? Does Hollywood have a tradition of doing this? In one way or another, am I a part of that?'"

"I still get comments to this day, 'Why can you do Luigi? And that's not offensive.' 'Why can you talk like Cletus? And that's not a problem? But you can't do Apu?'" he continued. "Honestly, at first, I thought, 'Let me look into this, and then I'll go back to doing the voice,' and say, 'I understand, but I'm going to keep doing this.' I was surprised myself that I came down on, 'No, I think I'm participating in a harm here.'"

"The main thing was when hate crimes were perpetrated against Southern Asian people, a lot of times, they were just called 'Apu,' which became a slur when convenience store guys were stabbed, shot, or robbed, especially when guys were who were more in the stereotypical professions like taxi driver. They were hated on physically and called 'Apu,'" Hank further explained.