“There are accents, by nature, to a white American, they sound funny. Period,” said Dana Gould, a former writer and co-executive producer on The Simpsons. He made this strikingly racist comment in his interview with Hari Kondabolu for the documentary 'The Problem with Apu', which examined how Apu Nahasapeemapetilon was represented in one of the most popular shows in television history.

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon (and first of all, what is that surname?) is an Indian immigrant who runs a convenience store in The Simpsons. From 1990 to 2017, he was voiced by Hank Azaria, a white actor. Apu had the most stereotypical Indian accent imaginable: words enunciated in a peculiar way, a sing-song delivery, a manner of speaking that nobody in India actually uses.

And yes, everybody in The Simpsons is a stereotype. There is the hyper-religious Ned Flanders, the socially reclusive geek Comic Book Guy, and even the Simpson family itself is a painfully funny take on the typical American suburban nuclear family. The problem arises when you take a culture that is already heavily scrutinised and caricatured for its people, its food and, most of all, the way it talks, and lean into it so heavily that the joke becomes the accent. This is exactly what Kondabolu’s documentary set out to dissect.

After the documentary came out, the show’s creators came under heavy fire, particularly because Apu was voiced by a white actor. So they did the most rational thing possible: they sidelined Apu. Azaria stopped voicing him, and Apu became a non-speaking character who appeared only in the occasional scene.

That is, until now. Apu is back, and this time, thankfully, he is voiced by Indian-American actor Sunil Malhotra. And obviously that is the bare minimum, given the socio-cultural media climate we live in in 2026. But Apu’s voice has not really changed.

There are two sides to this story.

On one hand, as multiple people online point out, The Simpsons has never cared about being culturally, socially or politically correct. The show builds its jokes on its characters’ idiosyncrasies, which are usually products of their stereotypes, and Apu was never mistreated for being Indian within the show.

On the other hand, the question of what good representation looks like comes up again. Does it become right if a brown man is caricaturing a brown man’s voice? It is a little strange to have an Indian actor contribute to Hollywood’s and white America’s stereotypical Indian-accented speech, especially when it parodies a country that has been pigeonholed for centuries as a “Third World” nation, a label that has made navigating life in some western countries needlessly difficult.

I grew up loving The Simpsons, catching it on Star World whenever it came on. Back then, I laughed along without questioning why Apu’s voice sounded the way it did. Watching it now, I can’t unhear it. Apu is back, and so is the question we have been circling for years: can a character truly be rescued from a stereotype, or merely recast? I’ll be watching to find out.

Watch The Simpsons on Disney+ Hotstar, with new episodes every Monday.

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