Across 38 seasons of “The Simpsons,” the Halloween-themed “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have offered a mix of eerie, self-contained tales. On Sunday, the series surprised viewers with a notable return: Apu, the familiar Kwik-E-Mart operator absent for most of a decade, spoke again in Springfield.
He and his wife, Manjula, reappeared with a substantial storyline—voiced by Indian American actors Sunil Malhotra, a seasoned voice artist, and Janina Gavankar (“The Morning Show”).
“Bringing Apu back feels like a reclamation. It truly IS his homecoming,” Malhotra and Gavankar wrote Sunday in a shared Instagram post.
Apu’s quiet return adds a striking turn to a long debate over how the character embodied a painful stereotype for some South Asian Americans. Following a 2017 documentary by comedian Hari Kondabolu, “The Problem With Apu,” the figure was mostly removed from the screen.
In “The Problem With Apu,” Kondabolu, who called himself a fan of the Fox program, explored his doubts. He spoke with several South Asian celebrities, including Kal Penn, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Hasan Minhaj, about growing up with the character. They recalled being teased and called “Apu” as a slur. Their view of Apu as a caricature was reinforced by the fact that Hank Azaria, a white actor, provided the voice.With the full name Apu Nahasapeemapetilon Jr., he seemed like the “forever foreigner,” a figure who embodies Indians in the United States through a single type—a convenience store owner, a recent immigrant, a heavy accent, and a restricted American identity—according to Bhoomi Thakore, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. Thakore observes that Kondabolu’s film highlighted how Apu was often the sole Indian character many people recognized when he first appeared in 1990.
Azaria withdrew from the part after the documentary and continued voicing other “Simpsons” roles, while Apu became silent and visible only in the background. Kondabolu had never demanded that Apu be canceled. On Monday, he commended “The Simpsons” for crafting “a clever solution to all this” by hiring Malhotra and Gavankar.
