After years of backlash, Apu returns to 'The Simpsons' with a South Asian voice

Across 38 seasons of “The Simpsons,” the Halloween-themed “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have always been a treat of spooky stand-alone storylines. On Sunday, the show surprised viewers with a major resurrection: Apu, the beloved Kwik-E-Mart operator who had not been heard for the better part of a decade, spoke once again in Springfield. He and his wife, Manjula, were back with a meaty plotline — and the voices of actual Indian American actors: Sunil Malhotra, a veteran voice-over artist, and Janina Gavankar (“The Morning Show”).

“Bringing Apu back feels like a reclamation. It truly IS his homecoming,” Malhotra and Gavankar said Sunday in a joint Instagram post. Apu’s unheralded return is a remarkable twist to a yearslong discourse about how the character has represented a painful stereotype for some South Asian Americans.

After a 2017 documentary by comedian Hari Kondabolu, “The Problem With Apu,” the character was largely exiled from the screen. How a documentary on Apu became a turning point In “The Problem With Apu,” Kondabolu, a self-described fan of the Fox show, tried to process his misgivings. He interviewed a slew of celebrities of South Asian origin, including Kal Penn, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Hasan Minhaj, about growing up with the character.

They shared memories of being bullied and called “Apu” as an insult. Adding to their view of Apu as just a caricature was that Hank Azaria, a white actor, voiced him. With the full name of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon Jr., he felt like the “forever foreigner, someone who represents Indians in the United States through this sole typology of being a convenience store owner, being a recent immigrant, having this heavy accent, being really limited in this sort of like American identity,” says Bhoomi Thakore, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut.

Thakore notes that Kondabolu’s film raised the notion that Apu was the only portrayal of an Indian character most people knew when he debuted in 1990. Azaria stepped away from the role after the documentary, continuing to voice other “Simpsons” characters, as Apu fell silent, seen only in the background. Kondabolu, however, had never called for Apu to be canceled.

On Monday, he praised “The Simpsons” for devising “a clever solution to all this” and hiring Malhotra and Gavankar. “I’m also still proud of the public conversation about race and represe…