Harry Shearer Doesn’t Seem Happy About ‘The Simpsons’ Plan to Recast Non-White Characters

Harry Shearer, who we at The Blemish love and respect and are very glad he didn’t put us in his Apologies of the Week segment on Le Show when we mixed him and Hank Azaria up, sounds unhappy about The Simpsons’ producers decided to stop having white actors voice non-white characters.

Here’s what Shearer said on Times Radio, via Deadline:

Though Shearer pointed out that he was not “opining” on whether the producers’ recent decision was a mistake, the actor said about playing a range of characters, “That’s the gig. That’s the job description.”

“I think there’s a conflation between representation, which is important,” Shearer suggested he disagreed with the “conflation” between representation and performance. “People from all backgrounds should be represented in the writing and producing ends of the business so they help decide what stories to tell and with what knowledge,” he said, adding about the acting side, “The job is playing someone I’m not.”

Shearer also explained that his opinion is not one of self-interest: “We don’t get paid by the voice.”

I mean, I’m not going to argue with Derek Smalls.

But I do agree with Shearer. No one wanted to be caught being outwoked when Jenny Slate announced she didn’t want to voice the mixed-race Missy on Big Mouth anymore and animated productions started falling all over themselves to announce they were recasting all their non-white characters with white voice actors. Bob’s Burgers really dodged a bullet here that corporations are pretending to care about race and not gender because half their voice cast is men doing women’s voices.

The Simpsons dropping Dr Hibbert the way they dropped Apu hasn’t brought us any closer to police no longer killing black people for the hell of it.

And let’s be honest, The Simpsons has gone downhill a lot since the old days, does anyone want to throw a bunch of characters sounding weird in the twilight years of the series on top of all of that?