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.

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…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business