Apu Nahasapeemapetilon spoke on The Simpsons Sunday night for the first time in nearly a decade, and he has a new voice. Sunil Malhotra, whose credits run from Grey’s Anatomy to The Legend of Korra and Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, has taken over the role Hank Azaria played for close to 30 years.
The return came in “The Revengening,” a Halloween episode that sets up next week’s Treehouse of Horror XXXVII. Producers kept it quiet right up to air. Fox sent out no screener, and the table read and production ran under NDAs, Variety reported.
How Apu Came Back
The episode follows a masked figure in a “Daft Monk” costume who keeps getting accidentally killed around Springfield, then returns a year later to take revenge on the people who left him for dead. When he finally pulls off the helmet at City Hall, it is Apu.
The script leans into the real story. Apu tells the town he was treated as if he never existed, Marge apologizes on Springfield’s behalf, and Lenny and Carl joke that there were plenty of internal conversations about him that never went anywhere. It all seems to be a nightmare. Apu wakes up back at the Kwik-E-Mart with his wife Manjula, now voiced by Janina Gavankar of The Morning Show, though a Daft Monk costume stashed under the register leaves the door open.
Apu had been seen on the show but not heard since the October 2017 episode “The Serfsons.” That was the year Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu put a spotlight on the character as a stereotype of South Asians, and Azaria later stepped away from the part. The idea for this comeback came from staff writer Nick Dahan, who wrote the episode, and co-executive producer Cesar Mazariegos.
Sunil Malhotra Was Ready To Walk Away
Malhotra said the audition call made his “stomach sink,” and that he was “prepared to walk away.” He told casting he would only consider an offer if he could meet showrunner Matt Selman and Mazariegos.
“My callback was the first of many times that no one at ‘The Simpsons’ let me down,” Malhotra said. He added that the sweetest part was unleashing the episode’s big “I AM APU!” line “over and over in the studio until we got it just right.”
And this isn’t a one-off. Selman said Apu, Manjula and the rest of the Nahasapeemapetilon family will be seen and heard more often now that the Kwik-E-Mart has reopened.
“We love this character, and wanted to bring him back in a smart, ‘Simpsons’-y way that allowed him to evolve,” Selman said. “We’re excited by what Sunil has already brought to the role, and look forward to seeing more of Apu in the future.”
The Simpsons is produced by Disney’s 20th Television Animation and airs Sundays on Fox.
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