Pay close attention to this clip from The Simpsons. Savor it.
It was announced Monday that series regular Harry Shearer, who has been the voice of Dr. Julius Hibbert for more than 30 years, is stepping aside for veteran voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson, who has been a frequent guest on the series, among his many credits.
It runs along the same lines as Hank Azaria's decision several months back to give up his role as grocer Apu, but as of this writing, the role hasn't been recast. The idea, of course, is to match African-American characters with African-American actors, a movement that, in television, began with Azaria's decision to give up doing Apu, and Richardson is certainly familiar with the show's cast.
Richardson debuts as Dr. Hibbert on Sunday.
4 comments:
Kevin Michael Richardson is a good voice actor, and I'm sure that he'll do fine in the role.
That being said, I hate to agree with the right wingnuts on anything, but this, I think, is an example of Political Correctness gone too far. For live action productions, this would be a justified argument, but we're talking about cartoons here. Why should the voice actor's race matter in this case when we're hearing their voices? So only black voice actors are allowed to voice black characters now? Women have been voicing cartoon boy characters for decades, but no one seems to have a problem with that. Two of the main characters on Bob's Burgers are females who are voiced by men, and no one cares about that.
I agree that there are too many talented black performers for these TV shows not to employ any, but this move seems like an overreaction to me.
I know about the men doing female characters (badly) on Bob's Burgers.
What this is really about is trying to make the casting in animation more inclusive and, in a sense, accurate, for a lack of a better word.
Ever since that racism situation, nay, outrage from last year, I had a feeling this would happen. Still, we can always count on Kevin - more often than not, he is capable of voicing African American characters. That’s not to say he’s incapable of non-African American roles, though. Two of some of my favorite KMR voices come to mind: Happy from The 7D and Santa Claus in How Murray Saved Christmas.
Kevin's done a ton of work for WB on their DC DTV's & series, and on several other series. Very in demand, I'd say.
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