“The Simpsons,” the long-running, satirical, animated TV show, has recast a voice actor who has been playing Dr. Hibbert, a Black doctor, according to the Daily Wire.
Since 1990, white actor Harry Shearer has played the recurring role of Dr. Julius Hibbert on the show for 31 of the 32 seasons (the character didn’t appear in season one).
In the next season of “The Simpsons,” Dr. Hibbert will be voiced by Black actor Kevin Michael Richardson, who currently does voice work on “The Boss Baby: Back in Business;” “Family Guy;” “American Dad!” and several characters on “Apple & Onion.”
Of note, Richardson has been voicing miscellaneous characters on “The Simpsons” since 2009. In fact, Richardson is one busy guy. He has done voice work on approximately 150 animated TV shows, beginning in 1994. And that’s not counting his numerous film and life-action TV roles.
20th Television told The Wrap that Monday’s episode, “Diary Queen,” would feature Harry Shearer as the voice of Dr. Hibbert for the last time, and that Kevin Michael Richardson would be taking over in next Sunday’s episode, “Wad Goals.”
The change came when FOX told USA TODAY last summer that “The Simpsons” will do away with actors playing other races. “Moving forward, ‘The Simpsons’ will no longer have white actors voice nonwhite characters,” the network said in a June statement shortly after the Black Lives Matter riots.
Back in spring 2018, Hank Azaria, who plays bartender Moe Szyslak and a slew of other characters on “The Simpsons,” announced that he was willing to stop voicing the Indian convenience-store proprietor Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.
In an interview that aired April 25, 2018, on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Azaria said: “My eyes have been opened. I think the most important thing is we have to listen to South Asian people, Indian people in this country when they talk about what they feel, and how they think about this character, and what their American experience of it has been. … I’m perfectly willing and happy to step aside or help transition it into something new. I really hope that’s what ‘The Simpsons’ does.”
