Brilliant Disguise: How to Find Your Voice, with Hank Azaria

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

As we take our stand,

tell

him

jungle land.

Right after this ad.

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What's your regimen for you're coming off of band practice, so I appreciate you.

Just been singing like Bruce for four hours, you know.

Almost as long as Bruce sings.

You don't do like some fancy herbal tea, honey, rhyme.

I have some spray that's like ginger-based that helps.

I have like a gargle that supposedly clears out your throat, which I occasionally bust out.

Vocal warm-ups.

I've had to take singing seriously, which I never had before.

I'll be 61 in April.

I turned 60 last April, which was too big a birthday to ignore, try as I might.

And it felt depressing to do nothing, but I couldn't decide what to do.

I'm not really a party guy anymore as i'm coming up on 19 years sober so i don't know how i came to this but i was like you know what might be fun is most of my friends are springsteen fans what if i throw a huge party which is very uncharacteristic of me tell my friends that i've got a springsteen tribute band coming but don't tell them that i'm gonna be the front man for it so i called it like a reverse surprise party which it was i pulled it all like no one knew i except my wife and like four other people that I was cooking this up.

And a band, one of whom is here today.

And for months, worked this impression up and created a band.

My son's jazz piano teacher ended up, he was in a Genesis cover band.

I said, if I want to do like a Springsteen version of that, could you throw that together?

And he said, sure.

By the night of my party, I had overpracticed to the point where I had to do a cortisone.

I take cortisone the day of, and I was so nervous that I actually threw up from nerves.

I've never thrown up from nerves in my life as a performer, but I did that day of my party.

I had a friend who was a big baseball player back in high school.

And then it went so well.

We'll be, got a lot, a bunch of gigs in May.

We're full-blown touring now.

All right, so I should just clarify that the reason I have invited Hank Azaria into our studio as a stop on his tour and the whole reason I find the guy so fascinating is not because I'm a fan of Bruce Springsteen.

Although I am.

And it's not because Hank is a huge sports fan, by the way.

Although he is.

The reason I've invited Hank Azaria here is because he is a living, breathing complication of the word voice

as a synonym for identity.

Because normally when we say that someone has found their voice, what we're really saying is that they found themselves.

But Hank's superpower is that he has created this whole city of voices that he can control on command.

From police chief wiggum to Apu, the manager of the Quickie Mart, who we'll discuss, to Mo, Mo, the bartender.

We're talking about more than 100 characters for The Simpsons over four decades and beyond.

But now, at age 60, Hank Azaria is relearning how to sing.

Chief Wingum doesn't sound great singing.

Nobody cares.

It's to be just funny and semi, semi-int.

You know.

Same for Mo.

People ain't listening to Mo's songs, you know, because it's got a beautiful melodic quality.

You know what I'm saying, Pablo there.

And I do.

Hank is articulating an exceedingly human concern at a time when artificial intelligence, incidentally, has promised to render his superpower obsolete.

And so what I wanted to find out here today was how the single most talented voice actor of his generation is choosing now which voices to embrace

and why.

I've been imitating the way Bruce talks since I'm a teenager.

And the story I tell is,

you know, a lot of my vocal impressions as a young man came out of hero worship, including this one you're listening to.

There were others, for example, my voice a little blown out, but young Al Pacino, you know, not older Al, who

talks like this.

Young Al, Godfather Al, Dog Day afternoon al i'm dying here everybody's coming down on me here that out

robbing the banks of federal offense they got me on kidnapping armed robbery they're gonna bury me man now fun fact

you take young al pacino on one end and bruce springstein on the other right in the middle there is motor bartender he's a mashup of them two peoples the simpsons audition i was doing a play in la

using the pacino the young al voice i was playing a drug dealer and i talking like this, and I auditioned like this for Mo.

And they said,

can you make it gravelly?

So I just sprinkled some Springsteen in there, and that became motor bartender.

And I got the job, apparently.

You discovered Mo in the audition at that moment.

Yes,

actually.

In my mind, there was going to be young Al Pacino.

They said, make it gravelly.

So then it became Motor Bartender.

Did you hold a grudge against Montgomery Burns?

No.

All right, maybe I did, but I didn't shoot him.

Checks out.

Yo, Kasir, you're free to go.

Good, because I got a hot day tonight.

Odd day.

Dinner with friends.

Dinner alone.

Watching TV alone.

All right.

I'm going to sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria Secret catalog.

See this catalog.

Now, would you unhook this already, please?

I don't deserve this kind of shampy treatment.

But then to continue just like to fill out the roster, is that a common template of like, okay, they want this, I got that.

Let's juzz it up a bit, and you get often, yeah, sometimes you're ready with what you know, you think would work and that's what stays.

Professor Frank was an impression of,

I'm not sure you're aware of this, Pablo, since you're a young person,

but Jerry Lewis was the original nutty professor back in the 50s, and he sounded like this.

This was the voice of the nutty professor.

I loved it as a child, and I was ready with that, and they liked me.

Studied traffic patterns and found that drivers move the fastest through yellow lights.

So now we just have the red and yellow lights.

I used to tell people that there was a nutty professor before Eddie Murphy.

And now when I tell the kids that, they say, and who is Eddie Murphy?

Glivin.

But that.

Yes.

Glaiven, which is a thing that just stuck in my brain for 20 years.

Yeah.

That's you, that script.

That's Jerry Lewis.

That's actually Jerry.

And he often would make ridiculous noises like that.

So that's just purely imitating Jerry Lewis's nonsense.

But Bruce, having seen him, I saw his one man show on Broadway.

I saw him at the garden, however, many moons ago now.

He is an ultra-marathoner.

Yes.

Have you met Bruce?

Twice.

Briefly.

I tell that story in concert as part of growing up.

Spam-alot one night.

I was knocking on my dressing room door after the show.

I opened it and staying there alone is Bruce Springsteen.

No one had prepped you for this.

No, no, no.

I don't know how.

So to this day, I don't know how that exactly happened.

We chatted for a while.

He kind of gave me his review of the show.

Of Spamalon.

Yes.

He's like, man, I love that show.

You know, it's kind of started out kind of silly and funny and then became like this celebration of comedy.

And then, you know, the music kicked in.

It was like a celebration of music calls.

And by the end, I was really moved.

You know, it was like this celebration of life and love.

Such a Bruce interpretation of it.

He talked long enough for me to get up the nerve to tell him what he really meant to

And I said, you know, Bruce, I got to tell you,

your music has meant so much to me.

Not just your music, but your talks, as we call them, the monologues you do in concert.

I had some very, very lonely, hard times as a teenager.

I was 17 or 18.

Oh man, he used to hate it.

And we got to where we'd fight so much that

I'd spend a lot of time out of the house.

And

those talks,

they really encouraged me to be a creative person when nobody else could or would.

I think it's true to say that I wouldn't be standing here backstage at the Schubert Theater talking to you if not for you.

That is what I said, Pablo.

That is not how I said it.

Here's how it said.

The court record will reflect, those were the words.

That was the text.

But here was the delivery.

Bruce, I love your music.

It meant so much for me going up.

It's a very hard times.

And if not for you, especially the talks, I sounded like a goose on acid.

And he looked at me very kindly after I finished my goose monologue and went, Yeah, all right, thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot.

Kind of gave me a fatherly pat on his shoulder.

Within 20 seconds, he was gone.

And I don't blame him at all.

I found out after that that, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't, he just wants to be a normal guy.

guy you know he doesn't love that fanboy insane energy and i don't blame him years later i'm at that show you mentioned his show yeah yeah the guy comes up to me at indubition and says you want to say hi to bruce afterwards i'm like of course i'm with my wife kate i'm like i'm not going to blow it this time i'm going to be calm and cool and we go downstairs have you been waiting for a redo a mulligan on music i never thought it would come up but here was my chance and

i'm squeezing my wife's hand i'm doing deep breathing exercises.

And he and Patty Schialfa, his wife, are coming down the receiving line.

I swear this is true.

He gets to us, and before he can even say hello, I say, Bruce, you played growing up.

I love growing up.

All the year, the lyrics to growing up are on my senior page of my high school yearbook.

I could show you the yearbook.

I wish I brought the yearbook.

And he looked at me as if to say,

Aren't you the nut that this up the last time?

Same shoulder pat, and he was gone.

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This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champion, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, U.S.

A.

Incorporated in York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please print responsibly.

My friend calls it Bruce Juice.

It's the insanity that overtakes you when you see Bruce Springsteen.

Certainly true of me.

So he's always been that guy to you.

Always, since I was about 12.

Yeah.

So this, in other words, this is on some level for the people gathered at your 60th birthday party.

Those who've known you the longest were not totally surprised.

Oh, no.

That this was going to be.

I'd say most of my friends are right with me on that Bruce mania.

But you know, part of why I developed the show is I knew that about maybe half or third of the audience would not be such big Bruce fans.

So I felt like I should introduce the songs, give context for them, tell them what they meant to me, or give background of the song itself.

And that kind of created these, and do it as Bruce.

And I wasn't sure whether that would work.

I'm like, this is kind of weird.

But for me, it's kind of natural taking on a vocal character and sort of giving it some kind of life that's sort of my gig.

So, so that's what I did, and it worked.

In the day, we swayed out on the street, but we're on a way of American triangle.

Hank, I dare say that my fandom

of you,

I am constantly trying to negotiate, like, when does the compliment I want to pay also sound like an insult on some level?

Well, you're kind of a human jukebox.

Oh, you're kind of just like squeezed toy.

I just want to keep on like poking and broading.

Are you like just a new version of an Elvis impersonator now?

Kind of.

I want to be kind and polite, but also like plumb the depths of what you've considered about this being the thing you're devoting the 60s, your 60s to.

Yeah, it's a good question.

I've asked myself the same question several times.

Because, Cause, you know, part of doing anything, I'm sure you experience it.

You wake up in the middle of the night sometimes.

You're like, what am I doing?

Like,

you grew up with you, right?

So you know, I, boy, I'm, I, it's imposter syndrome, they call it.

Like I've really faked a lot of people out to get where I am.

But when you say the term imposter syndrome, I feel like there's a bit more literalism.

Yeah.

In the sense that you are, again, not to be pejorative, a professional imposter.

Yes, which goes deep.

As much as I have plastic vocal cords and an ability to mimic, that drove my, you know, career choice.

Equally at play was this, you know, budding alcoholic, very insecure person who was desperate to be anybody but himself.

And that was equally at play.

That kind of drove the obsession to not just do this, but do it.

extremely to the point.

I mean, when I was a teenager, around the time I was loving Bruce,

you know, all you want to do as a teenager is fit in.

So the tough kids in my neighborhood talk like this, and I sounded like them with them.

And as far as they know, this is what I sounded like.

And the jock sounded a different way, and I was a pretty good athlete, and I sounded a different way with them.

And the burnout kids, you know, were a little mellower.

And I sounded another way with them.

And

this is before I figured out I can make a living doing that.

But by the time I'm 15, I was so genuinely confused as to which one was actually the real me

that it actually freaked me out.

Like panic attack freaked me out.

I think hopefully others relate to what you just said the way that I do, which is to say that is a version of code switching is a more modern term for it.

It's also trying to be liked by different groups that you're not naturally a member of.

Right.

And so for you, there's this thing of, again, to use just another phrase, like everyone's trying to find their voice.

Yeah.

I don't know if.

It has a different meaning for me.

And yeah, with this, you know, I would say that what drives me professionally a lot is the fear of what it's like, oh my God, I'm going to be some cheesy Elvis impersonator or whatever actor equivalents there are to that.

You like shoot up in the middle of the night like, oh my God,

I'm going to do this poorly and I'm going to look like an idiot.

I mean, you know, like shooting the birdcage, there were a lot of nights where I shot up in bed like, what am I doing?

I'm doing an impression of my maternal grandmother

in a bikini.

What is happening?

It felt like Lucy stunted up.

Well, what was happening in that case was one of the great roles of all time.

But before we knew that, it was really like, and it was one of my first big jobs.

I had no clue,

you know, it was really, even before I got that, I used to wake up in the middle of the night like that just for even attempting to try to be an actor.

I'm like, who am I to do this?

What am I doing?

This is just nuts, you know.

If the origin story of your superpower was some level of fear.

Well, that was a big part of it.

But then, also, by the way, sort of wound up with some amount of people pleasing, if I can just go through to connect some of the dots here.

Yes.

You wanting to be somebody who was identified most prominently as not your actual self.

I mean, look, that is also acting, right?

Like that's so if.

It's a good definition of a character actor.

Well, so that's the next seemingly pejorative term I wanted to ask you about was what does it mean to be a character actor to you?

Because I've heard it used in ways that are not complimentary while also being obviously the thing that many of us will leave the movie theater praising that guy that just did that.

It's a double-edged sword.

I mean, often it means like, oh, you're not the star.

You're not the lead actor.

You're not box office.

You know, and it can mean that.

It can also mean the complimentary version, which is, my goodness, you really transformed yourself.

Yes.

Martin Short once interviewed me as Jiminy Glick.

Okay, so I don't have a clue who's coming up, but I can't imagine it'll be anything less than a hoot.

Adrian, do what you do.

And here's how he put it.

You went, well, Hank Atheria, it's just so wonderful to talk to you.

You just disappear into all these roles.

And

now that I meet you in person, I can see that it's no great loss.

So there's an element of that.

You know,

to put it in like brutal bottom-line box office Hollywood terms, you get an opportunity or two or three, if you hit a certain level as an actor to, you know, hit the next level or two.

And the two or three movies that I did that were that opportunity tanked.

They didn't do well.

Godzilla.

Who The hell is that?

Mystery Men.

Seeing as it's your first night and all, I suppose I'll fork give you if you fork get.

And a movie called Mystery Alaska.

The mystery team has a shot, right?

There's all movies that I was, I starred in or had a big enough role where, and I think if maybe any one or those of those movies had done really well, I might have been able to continue to parlay that into more lead roles and this and that.

Are you suggesting, by the way, that if Godzilla was a bigger hit, we would never have gotten Along Came Polly?

The hippopotamus, he is not one going cool bean.

I am a hippo, no way jose.

So he tried to paint the stripe on himself to be like the zebra, but he fool no one.

Then he tried to put this spot on his skin to be like the leopard.

But everyone knows he is a hippo.

So at certain point he uh look himself in the mirror and he just say, hey, I am a hippopotamus, and there is nothing I can do about it.

It's difficult to say.

That was another hard accent for me.

Took me three months to get a French accent.

Was difficult to work at it.

My friend Ben Stiller, God bless him, he's employed me a lot of times.

Yeah, you're also, again, in the dodgeball instructional video as well.

Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and

dodge.

Cross between Riptorn, who was old patches, and Clark Gable.

That was the mashup there.

But, you know, you're right.

If I had become a more major movie star, I might not have done those.

I might not have because I would have been busy doing something else.

It's like, no, I can't take a small role like that.

And actually, over time, I've become very grateful because I think I'm kind of happier.

It's more me to adopt a voice and a persona and kind of disappear in the role and it's no great loss.

And I really kind of love it.

Of course, I have my day job, which pays me so well that I don't, you know,

I can do that.

I do want to stress as I continue to do the thing where I say, here's something that people say while hoping that you engage with it.

And I am free from having lobbed it at.

It's an old reporter trick.

It's not the most well-aware of it.

Not the most subtle grenade.

What do you say to people who say you're an asshole?

It's like, well,

what are you saying?

That's right.

Just degrees away from actual responsibility for my questions.

But I was going to ask about whether you draw a distinction between these voices being instruments to play or personalities to inhabit and deepen and love.

It's both.

It started out as pure mimicry

with a deep love of what I was imitating.

I was really raised by the television set.

And so in a way, it was a way to keep my best friends with me.

You know, my love of sports became because the guys who announced the game, you know, were like my uncles.

Nobody else was spending that kind of time with me.

Nobody else was describing to me what the hell was going on at the Mets game.

And I really appreciated those guys.

And that became Jim Brockmeyer eventually.

My wife, Lucy.

She was wearing a strap on and she was plowing our neighbor Bob Greenwald.

And folks, I do mean right in the ass.

Fastball Mrs.

Just Low Count goes for three and two.

So,

um,

started out as mimicry.

One of my main heroes was Peter Sellers, who was Inspector Pluser in the original Pink Panther film.

I would, of course, tell you more, but it would be safer for you if I did not.

Dr.

Strangelove, one of my favorite movies, a crazy German scientist

combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure hit.

His ability to take a weird voice like that, a silly voice, but give it unbelievable humanity and specificity,

physically and otherwise,

really,

I don't think I've ever achieved what the level of Peter Sellers, but that's what I'm always shooting at.

Like, can I take a voice and then fill it in?

I also, in my mid-20s, I was already on The Simpsons, but I went to an acting class for a guy named Roy London, who was a genius acting teacher.

He's passed away many years.

But he didn't let me do a voice or be funny for about four years in class.

He said, you can do that.

You need to now put yourself in these roles, which was very hard for me because I wanted to be anybody but myself.

And he was like, idiot.

Really great acting means you're willing to share yourself with people.

It doesn't matter if you sound like Chief Wiggum or like Mo or like Bruce or like your grandma

Agador in the bird cage.

Doesn't matter what you sound like.

It has to be you underneath it.

And

that time in that class is what made the physicality

and the ability to take a run at what Peter Sellers was doing for me.

Physicality is an interesting word for somebody who in many of these cases is not visually seen.

Yeah.

But it is clearly something that when you talk about, okay, how can you tell that there's real Hank in there?

How do you describe that for people who are just hearing you often?

Well, I did this piece recently for the New York Times about AI and can we, are we replaceable?

And part of the point I was making was you have to really act and physicalize, even just to make a vocal performance.

You have to fully act it.

For me, you know, I remember.

when I took that class with Roy.

I was already Chief Wegg.

But I started thinking about things like, well, how would I handle like being a beat cop, like for real?

Like, is that how I would really approach it?

What if I really were this bartender?

And actually used to bartend.

I joked that if I didn't become motor bartender, I would have remained Hank the bartender, which is probably true.

But I started just getting a little more personal.

And a lot of that was just having faith that

trust that if I showed people who I was, they would find it interesting at all,

which I did not believe

growing up.

So that was, and I had to kind of go to,

that acting teacher sent me to therapy because he would send,

have you heard of this guy, Phil Stutz?

You know, sure, the Netflix.

Yeah, the Jonah Hills.

The Jonah Hill.

And the idea of being in sync with the shadow, it's a sense of wholeness.

Homeless means I don't need anything else.

I'm whole the way I am.

And that's very freeing.

Phil was my therapist for years.

He talks like this

he called me schmuck

schmark listen that was a term of affection yeah kind of affection also because he got sick of my whining yeah

he would he was hilarious he's sitting there and like you whine and like roy i was having this dual crisis i would freeze in my performances because i would um not trust that you know in acting class i mean I would not trust that what I was doing was interesting and Roy wouldn't let me do a voice or be funny.

So I'm like, I'm nowhere, I'm nothing.

And Roy couldn't break it too.

So he sent me to see.

He would send people to Stutts who needed deeper work under the hood than just an acting class could address.

And I was also freezing in auditions.

All of a sudden, I would like literally freeze.

I couldn't do it.

So it was becoming a problem.

So, you know, I would whine at Phil Stutz for like 15, 20 minutes.

And

he'd go, Yeah, all right, shut the up.

Um,

your problem is your ⁇ ing baby.

And then he would fill it in with a rather brilliant explanation of what he meant by that.

And he would say, like, because look, if I told you that I was having these problems, you know, you'd think it wasn't that big a deal, but because it's happening to you, you think it's the f ⁇ ing end of the world, you know.

And he got me through that auditioning thing and that it did take both of those men

and a lot of

work to sort of work through it personally and then professionally.

Like I just have to be able to say things to people as myself and trust that that's going to be enough.

I've come to appreciate over time, certainly in the realm of

comedians, that

as much as

a civilian might worry about, okay, I don't want to have this guy, you know, just like, you know, pull string, tell me jokes, make me laugh.

I have found that there is a certain compulsiveness to wanting the people around you to have a good time, to enjoy you.

How much of that needed to be broken down?

Or no, is that just something that you are at peace with?

Like this is, this is actually something that makes people happy.

And what is a greater gift in life than simply that?

Yeah, that's been a journey too.

It's a good question, Pablo.

Part of recovery, the kind of alcoholic codependency recovery you go through,

is you learn that there are certain archetypal roles that

dysfunctional families will place you in.

And there's only four.

There's really only four.

This is an oversimplification, but there's, you know, hero, good kid.

There's scapegoat, black sheep.

There's comic relief mascot, which I was.

And there's lost child who either runs away or kind of disappears in the room.

You don't see them quiet.

I was the funny one.

which was fun and funny.

The dark side of that is I was, there was such tension in the house that I had to respond in some way, made me very nervous.

And if people were laughing and cheered up, you know, maybe I'd get fed and, you know, people would calm down.

I also really had this, became an adult believing that everybody's mood was my responsibility.

You know, so it was less about, hey, like me, I'm funny, and more about, are you all right?

I can't tolerate if you're not

okay.

selfishly weirdly because then you can't take care of me you know right so I had to undo that which wasn't simple it was a journey and then kind of come back around to seeing the ability to make people laugh is a tremendous gift and it's a joy and why not share it with folks but not feel responsible that you must you know

I want to also just pay you a compliment that

is, I consider,

earned, which is a friend of mine who I've not seen in a long time, but Huri Kandabalu.

Yes.

Hurry, yeah.

Did the film, The Problem with Apu?

Yes.

I've had a great career filled with laughter, critical acclaim, and me shaking the hands of many famous white men on television.

I should be completely happy.

But there's still one man who haunts me: Apu Nahasapima Pedalon.

Serving the customer is merriment enough for me.

The argument for those uninitiated is simply that the character of Apu, which we all grew up, I mean, we being non-I would say South Asians, but even me, I'm Asian American.

Like, I didn't really think

twice about it.

Well, neither did I.

Well, that became clear.

Apu, a cartoon character voiced by Hank Azaria, a white guy.

A white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.

If I saw Hank Azaria do that voice at a party, I would kick the sh out of him.

But then your desire to think deeply about it, about the ways in which that character ended up making people's lives, however stochastically, as they say, however, inadvertently,

worse.

And that was real to lots and lots of people in America.

How many of you were bullied in any capacity as a child?

We raising hands?

Yeah, raising the hands.

We'll do the hands thing.

Yeah.

Okay, now, how many had to deal with like being called a poo or that being referenced?

How you responded to that is frankly a case study that I don't think anybody else has followed necessarily.

It might be a unicorn.

But is like the model for what to do when it feels like, am I being canceled?

Am I responsible?

Am I a victim?

Am I the bully?

How did you approach that entire saga?

Programmatically, by the time that happened,

any crisis in my life, you

respond is the right word because in your life as an addict and as a codependent person, it's a lot of reacting, a lot of reacting.

And some of the reacting can kill you, like drinking yourself to death or whatever.

So I had to, like anybody in recovery, has to learn to respond.

And that requires, you know, feeling your feelings, taking the pause, as they say in AA, learning that when you're kind of most upset is probably the

biggest cue to shush,

privately and publicly.

Share with folks you trust how you're feeling, what you're going through.

So that's how I approached that.

And

what that boiled down to, what Hurry presented to me was essentially, do I keep doing that voice or not?

That was the dilemma.

That's what it boiled down to.

All I'm saying is that The Simpsons is like your racist grandfather.

You love your grandfather.

He's been there your whole life and has taught you so many valuable things.

But he still does racist stuff regularly.

So if he can't change, maybe it's time he dies.

And you can just remember the best things about him.

In order to answer that question, do I keep doing this voice or not, required a deep dive.

It wasn't like, well, let me take a week and look into this.

It was...

Probably two or three years because we all just froze at The Simpsons.

We had no idea what to do.

The character just stopped saying anything.

And it became a deep dive into: well,

is this racist?

Does Hollywood have a tradition of doing this

in one way or another?

Am I part of that?

The aforementioned Peter Sellers, you know, that voice was based on a Peter Sellers performance from a movie called The Party in the mid-60s, where he played an Indian guy named Hrundi V.

Bakshi in Brownface.

What's the difference between Cliseu, Dr.

Cliseu, silly French voice,

or Dr.

Strangelaff, silly German voice, and Huni Bibakshi, a rather silly Indian voice?

And it's a question I still get asked today.

People will say, I've comments on like still to this day.

Why can't you do Luigi?

And that's not offensive.

Why can you talk like Cleitus?

And that's not a problem, but you can't do Apu.

Right.

Honestly, at first I thought, let me look into this and then I'll go back to doing the voice and say, I understand, but I'm going to keep doing this.

And I was surprised myself that I came down and no, actually, I think I am participating in a harm here.

What was the thing that you discovered that tipped the scale?

Well, look, I'm not a hero, by the way.

I got dragged to this, okay?

And I couldn't get out of it because I had this professional public decision to make.

Yeah.

There were a few things that were linchpin moments in that decision.

I'd say the main thing was

when hate crimes were perpetrated against Southern Asian people, a lot of times they were just called APU.

It became a slur when convenience store guys were stabbed or shot or robbed.

You know, especially when guys who were in that, you know, those more stereotypical professions taxi driver,

they were hated on.

physically and called APU.

That wasn't great.

That means it got away from us.

Something got away.

Of course, we didn't mean it that way.

Yes.

And we're not to blame for people turning it into that kind of hate, but we did tee it up.

It was interesting.

I did a movie once with a very talented vocal guy, another talented vocal guy.

And he would do sort of a Jewish voice, kind of a Jackie Mason voice.

He knew I was Jewish and he'd kid around with me this way.

And this was a person who was famous for voices.

And you took, took, didn't bother me at all as a Jewish person that he would do this voice.

But then I started thinking, well, what if this voice was the only, see, Apu was the only character on television or any American pop culture for 20 years?

That is, that is the kid.

That was it.

Apu's what they had, for better or for worse.

And I started thinking, well, what if this was the only voice in the American pop culture Jews?

And every time, you know, people just say, hey, do you talk like this?

Your father talks like this.

I probably wouldn't love that.

However, even if that were the case, which it isn't,

even if it were, I am a white guy.

So when I walk around outside, unless I talk like this, nobody would assume that I talk this way.

But Huri, no matter how American he is or sounds, appears Indian and will get...

Apu crap if somebody decides to give it to him.

And that Apu Krap isn't just, oh, it's a cartoon.

Oh, that's a silly voice.

There's all this other stereotyping and things that have teeth in them

that affects people of color in this country.

So while Apu might not be the most important thing in the world, it's a window into quite important thing.

And I should just note here that Hank Azaria did not appear in Hari's movie, which came out in 2017.

But the two of them did eventually sit down together on NPR, on Code Switch, in 2023.

What happens after a public call out?

For comedians Hari Kondabolu and Hank Azaria, the answer has a lot to do with race.

But I'm like totally sick of talking about it.

The story that's more interesting is the after.

Hank, like, you know, his journey to hear, you know, what is the difference between a person of color calling something out versus a white person calling something out.

Like that to me is interesting.

You know, it's this discussion of white fragility of the internet of communication of conversation.

That the rest of the stuff to me is like, I'm so done with it.

I'm done.

You can refer them to me, Hurry.

I would love to.

I'm not even kidding.

Because I do owe it.

It's my amends.

I need to keep having the conversation.

I owe it.

Yeah.

It's part of my amends.

And so at this point, it just feels safe to say that if and when we do replace Hank Azaria with AI, because it is cheaper and easier and a a lot faster than discovering, you know, the next flawed human being who can create more than 100 voices and also be responsive to the genuine concerns of a person of color in America, and then also want to create a one-man show and a book and a whole tour in his 60s where he magically transforms into his childhood hero.

What we're going to lose, at the very least, is truly one of our most scarce resources at this point.

A conscience.

What I wonder about with AI,

right?

Are we underrating what it means to marvel at the fact that actually a human is doing this, even if the human's goal is to make you think that it's not that human?

They can't do it yet.

They might soon.

They really might.

Most people might not care, meaning,

sure, it's not quite as great as human beings doing it, but close enough, you know, these days we're so distracted with devices, people aren't watching one screen anyway.

So it might be just good enough while you're watching your phone and glancing up at whatever else you're glancing at for a performance.

That

what do you care whether it's AI or not?

And hopefully, you know, it'll never replace live performance.

That's another reason I'm enjoying the Bruce thing.

They can't AI me out of that.

Towards the end here,

can I do the very, I I guess this is the biggest heat check I will have as an interviewer today.

Can I convince you to do some Bruce for us at the end here?

You mean sing a song?

Yeah.

Well, let's put it this way: if it doesn't work out so good, we're gonna cut this part, right?

Absolutely.

All right,

Never done this before, Pablo.

This is again a real heat check for me to say.

By the way, what I really need at the end of today's show is for Alden Harris McCoy to come in with his acoustic guitar and for Hank to wear his coat so he can approximate

Bruce Springsteen.

His little song called Jungle Land.

Very stripped down.

But a ranger has had a homecoming

in Harlem late last night.

And a magic rat drove his sleek machine

over the Jersey State line.

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a dodge, drinking warm beer.

in the soft summer rain

The rat pulls in the town rolls up his pants.

Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane.

But a maximum lawmen run down Flamingo chasing a rat and a barefoot girl.

And the kids around there look just like shadows.

They're always quiet holding hands.

But from the churches to the jails,

tonight all is silence in the world

as we take our stand

down,

jungle

land.

How's that?

Alden Harris McCoy on guitar, Hank Gazaria

on vocals.

Fing incredible.

All I have to say at the end here is, Hank,

thank you for being you, man.

Thanks for having me here.

Thanks from all of us.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.