For years, The Simpsons’ producers knew that they had a problem on their hands. Hank Azaria, a white guy, had done the Indian-accented voice of Apu for the length of The Simpsons’ run. Even when the Indian and Indian-American community repeatedly requested that Azaria stop voicing the character, the producers kept him voicing Apu. Then this year happened. Suddenly, “white actors voicing animated characters of color” became an issue and tons of white voice actors stepped down from voicing those animated characters. I think that’s a good thing but I also think that the voice-actor issue was not the most pressing diversity and representation issue facing Hollywood or the country. Still, a good first step. But not according to Harry Shearer, who does the voice for multiple Simpsons’ characters, including Dr. Hibbert, the black doctor character.

The voice of Mr Burns and Ned Flanders on The Simpsons has questioned the show’s decision to stop white actors playing black characters. Harry Shearer, 76, who has also voiced the African-American medic Dr Julius Hibbert in the animated comedy, said: “The job of the actor is to play someone who they are not.”

In an interview with Matt Chorley on Times Radio yesterday Shearer, who also plays Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner and Reverend Lovejoy, said actors should be able to play characters outside their personal experience, noting that he also had nothing in common with Mr Burns and Ned Flanders. “I have a very simple belief about acting. The job of the actor is to play someone who they are not. That’s the gig, that’s the job description,” he said.

He warned that diversity efforts were in danger of conflating “representation”, the important work of ensuring that the industry employs people and reflects the lives of different communities, with on-screen performance.

He declined to criticise the show directly, joking that “we don’t get paid by the voice” so he would not suffer financially from not playing Dr Hibbert. He said his favourite character was Mr Burns, the money-hungry nuclear power tycoon. “He’s pure evil, and nothing’s better than that for comedy.”

[From The Times]

I understand the “it’s acting, we’re not trying to be the most accurate representation” argument, but I’d just like to point out something: that is the same argument made exclusively by cisgendered white actors everywhere when they want to play transgender characters or characters of different races. Scarlett Johansson said something similar to Shearer when she wanted to play a transgender character – she argued that she could play a tree, especially given that she’d already 100% played a Japanese character. As much as I think that the “vocal blackface/brownface” issue is a tricky one with case-by-case nuances, I also think that white people need to be more f–king aware of how often they should step away from playing or voicing characters of other races or genders.

Photos courtesy of WENN, The Simpsons/Fox.