The Simpsons Recasts Dr Hibbert s Voice Actor Harry Shearer After Vowing to Properly Cast Actors aceshowbiz.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aceshowbiz.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Sky News host Paul Murray says it is “rubbish” a white actor cannot play an animated black character in cartoons.
“You are not allowed to have white actors performing black characters in a cartoon series, one of the most famous versions of that is the great Harry Shearer who voiced a character known as Dr Julius Hibbert,” he said.
The Boondocks, and
F is for Family, just to name a few. He’s also a veteran of
The Simpsons, having lent his voice to characters like Anger Watkins, Jimi Hendrix, Dave Chappelle, and many more since 2009, so this is familiar territory for him. (Shearer, of course, is still involved with the series – he voices characters like Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, and more.)
After Hank Azaria stepped away from the role of convenience store owner Apu on
The Simpsons last year, the producers decided to change their policy about voice actors playing certain roles. “Moving forward,
confirmed that Shearer will not continue to voice Dr. Hibbert after all, following in the footsteps of Simpsons colleague Hank Azaria, who stepped down from his roles as Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in January 2020 and Carl Carlson in the fall. Kevin Michael Richardson will be taking over the role from Shearer, who could be heard voicing Dr. Hibbert for the last time in last Sunday’s episode, “DairyQueen.” Richardson will debut in this week’s forthcoming episode.
This development isn’t wholly unexpected: In June 2020, the show’s producers released a statement confirming that they would no longer have white actors play characters of color. But Shearer’s dissent and seniority did manage to leave things up in the air. Though he’s ultimately hanging up his animated stethoscope, Shearer still has quite a few staple characters under his belt, including Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Mr. Smithers, Principal Skinner. Basically, he’ll still be quite busy even with one less character.