Hank Azaria Runs Through His Iconic ‘Simpsons’ Voices and Movie Roles

Any time I'm doing a voice, which is often for me,

it's based on someone I know.

No, I try to get away with it.

So Pretty Woman, I was 23 years old, 22.

I played a cop out on Hollywood Boulevard.

I had done a TV show before that

and told everybody I was gonna be in it, as you would do,

and then got cut from the show.

And I was really embarrassed and bummed.

So I didn't tell anybody

that I had gotten this few lines in Pretty Woman

because I just assumed I was gonna get cut.

And then by the time the movie came out,

I forgot that I didn't tell anyone,

and I got all these calls from angry relatives going,

Why didn't you tell me you were in a movie?

I'm like, oh, I forgot I didn't tell people.

That was fun.

That's the movie that made Julia Roberts.

I think everybody in show business already knew

she was gonna be huge.

She was coming off of that movie Mystic Pizza,

but that movie really made her.

Heat, that was insanely great working with Al Pacino,

a hero of mine growing up.

Michael Mann, who directed Heat, does a lot of takes,

a lot of takes, the point where you get a little cross-eyed.

And we shot that scene with Al where he screams,

She got a great ass, that scene,

which he had said normally like 100 times,

'Cause she got a great ass,

and then I guess he had been, maybe got driven crazy

by how many takes he had to do

and decided to yell it into my face from a foot away,

to which I reacted to, I go, Jesus, like that,

not acting, just terrified,

which ended up in the movie.

It's the only ad lib at all of mine

that ended up in the movie, was me going, Jesus

when Al Pacino screamed at me.

Moe the bartender on The Simpsons is based on Al Pacino

but young Al Pacino.

Dog Day Afternoon, Michael Corleone Al Pacino,

who's a little higher, Serpico Al Pacino.

And I did that for Moe the bartender

at my audition for The Simpsons.

They said we like that voice

but it needs to be gravelly.

So if you take Al Pacino, I make him gravelly,

you get Moe the bartender.

The Simpsons, yes, The Simpsons.

Probably Moe.

He's been the most developed and closest to my heart.

Moe is sort of a weird version

of young Al Pacino made gravelly.

If this gets out, the next words you say

will be muffled by your own butt.

Police Chief Wiggum is an imitation of Edward G. Robinson

who's an old, old gangster actor from the 1940s.

Wiggum.

Yeah right, Mister.

Mm-hmm, an elephant just knocked over your mailbox, okay.

And it's actually my impression of Mel Blanc's impression

of Edward G. Robinson.

Mel Blanc for you kids playing at home

was the original voice of Bugs Bunny

and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters.

Snake is just kind of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times

and also a kid I went to college with.

He was always stoned.

Ho-ho, okay.

Comic Book Guy is another friend of mine from college,

lived next door freshman year.

Ooh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix.

He had a Barcalounger in his room.

He would sit in it, and he would have a list

on his little dry erase board outside his door.

If he liked you, you were on his good list.

If he did not like you that week, you were on his bad list.

He would yell it out, You're on my list.

That was the basis for Comic Book Guy.

Dr. Nick is a pretty bad impression of Ricky Ricardo.

Hi everybody.

Hi Dr. Nick.

So yeah, I just thought it would be funny

to talk like this.

They assign roles in The Simpsons based on their instincts

for who will do what best.

And they're usually right.

Sometimes, they're not right,

and we will either say, ooh you know,

I think I do Johnny Carson better,

or actually, I don't do a very good Fred Flintstone.

I think Dan does.

I didn't know until many years later, kids,

that there was an original Moe the bartender voice

that I replaced, I didn't know that.

And I was like, did you just, did that guy you didn't like

what he did?

And Matt Groening was like, oh no, he was great.

I'm like, so then why did you recast him?

Like, oh he was just a dick.

His voice was great, but he was just kinda

jerky to everybody.

Think about how awful,

that that guy could have been

on The Simpsons his whole life.

Lesson to you kids, always be nice.

Friends, the TV show Friends.

I wanted to be Joey, and they said no,

as you might be aware of.

It's the only time I've ever asked to go back.

I was like, you know what, you gotta see me again.

I gotta try it again.

That's how much we knew Friends was gonna be

at least really funny.

We couldn't have known it was gonna be that big a hit.

Everyone I knew was like crazed to get in that show.

They rejected me from Joey,

but then I was lucky enough to do the movie Quiz Show,

which kinda raised my status and they liked me in that

and they gave me that role of Phoebe's boyfriend,

scientist boyfriend.

The Birdcage directed by Mike Nichols.

Mike had seen me in Quiz Show.

He offered me any small role I wanted, which was nice,

but small, small role.

I picked that one, which he thought was crazy.

He was like, why, really, that one?

I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then he heard me do it at the table read,

and he laughed, he said, okay, I can see why

you'd like to do that, sure.

And then later they ended up expanding the role.

It was supposed to be just one scene.

David Alan Grier was supposed to play the main

butler character,

but they felt that an African-American in that role

might be in poor taste.

It was based on a French film.

So they ended up deciding to make it Latin

and give it to me.

And then I worked on a Guatemalan accent very hard,

and it ended up just sounding exactly like

my maternal grandmother.

As I was reading, I'm like, oh this just,

this sounds like my grandma.

Mad About You, I played a dog walker,

who talk like this.

He kinda spoke this way,

which is sort of based on a kid I grew up with

who ended up being a doorman at my building

who ended up becoming an actor.

And I'm doing this voice for years,

and I run into that guy.

And he goes, hey, you know I saw you on Mad About You.

And I was like, oh no, really?

I was like, yeah?

He was like, yeah, I thought it was great.

He didn't realize it was based on him,

so I'm glad I didn't say, I'm sorry,

I didn't mean to appropriate your entire being.

Godzilla, that movie became the sort of poster child

for what was wrong with Hollywood.

Excess in budget and marketing style over substance.

You remember the billboards.

Yeah, unfortunately for that movie,

the ad campaign was a lot better than the movie itself.

It was really excoriated.

It didn't do well at the box office.

People really, it was one of those projects

people really jumped on hating, much to my chagrin

because it was a big break for me,

and so, that movie doing well

would have been very good for my career.

I remember it was like a five month shoot,

it was a long shoot.

I remember Roland Emmerich, the director, saying to me

about a week before we were gonna shoot,

So I decided to do it all gonna be in the rain,

every exterior is gonna be in the rain,

the whole time it's going to be raining, raining, raining

and it'll make the creature look great

because the blurry lines.

It was the early days of CGI,

so anything that helped it look visually better was good.

I was like, awesome.

I remember coming home and telling

my girlfriend at the time about that,

who was a very experienced actress

who had shot a lot in the rain.

I had never shot in Hollywood rain.

She was like, oh my god, that's terrible.

I'm like, why?

She's like, you're gonna be soaked.

You're doing about 12 hours a day for five months,

every exterior, you're gonna be so.

I'm like, oh, how bad can it be?

It was really bad.

Hollywood rain is like big drops,

it's like having buckets of water

dumped on your head practically.

But anyway, it's horrible.

I got like sick four times.

Being wet is the worst.

That's like more than anything else,

being soaking wet for extended periods of time,

that'll make you question your career choice.

Mystery Men, one of my favorites.

Blue Raja, master of silverware.

I just decided that it should be a proper British voice.

I don't know why.

It seemed funny.

What was funny about that, we decided that

he's just putting that on.

In the movie, when his mom talks to him,

he's like, Mom, get out of my room.

And then, that's how he is with his mom.

And then as the Blue Raja, he's this sophisticated

sort of James Bond, if you will.

That was again, the early days of CGI.

There were a lot of cooks.

Me and Ben Stiller and Bill Macy and Janeane Garofalo

and Paul Reubens and the director was a first-time director

who came from the commercial world.

And so, there was no real strong daddy,

which is really what a director should be.

He announced in the middle of shooting it,

Kinka Usher is his name, that he was done.

I'm gonna happily go back to commercials

where I make a million dollars a pop

and don't have to deal with all you crazy people.

He was done halfway through that movie.

But there was a lot of intense arguments on that set.

Bill Macy dressed as a shoveler, the Shoveler,

and me dressed as the Blue Raja throwing forks at people.

And I was like, seriously arguing with each other.

We looked absurd.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

At that point, Ben was making these films

and invited me into that, yes, Patches O'Houlihan,

which is a kind of a combination between Clark Gable

and what I imagine a young Rip Torn to be.

And that was fun.

I just came in for a day and was silly and left.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Big Ben Stiller franchise.

Boris Karloff impression, I play the villain,

the evil Pharaoh who comes back to life.

Originally, there was going to be sort of

a voice similar to what I did as the Blue Raja,

though a little less flowery,

sort of more casual and bored British.

They felt it was a little boring,

and so, at the makeup wardrobe test,

they threw up a microphone and I tried out some voices,

and as a joke, just thought of talking as Boris Karloff

because he was the original mummy back in the 1930s.

And they really liked it.

Ben and Shawn Levy really liked it.

I'm like, really guys?

Because this is a little silly.

They're like, no, no, no, that's funny.

Along Came Polly, I did a French accent in that.

Claude, yes, Claude.

Yeah, the hippo story.

Everybody that's, yeah, that seems to be the takeaway

from that film.

When you're gonna be naked in a movie,

it really motivates you.

I can say scuba, but well, are you for scuba?

Are you?

You're not?

As the French would say, agh.

Do let me know when you are for scuba.

Anastasia, the fine animated film.

What would you like to know about Bartok?

It's based on a cousin of mine.

I told you, I base these characters on real people.

This is my cousin, a girl cousin actually.

And always stayed in my head as be good for something

and sure enough, a little white bat.

Who knew?

Brockmire, most importantly, Brockmire.

I love it.

It's my favorite thing I've ever done.

Most fun I have doing.

It started as a voice, as most of my characters do.

It's a voice that I grew up imitating

the baseball announcer of the 1970s,

they all sounded like this, kids.

Go look it up.

Go on YouTube, find a baseball broadcast in the 70s,

you're gonna hear this guy.

Harry Shearer at The Simpsons, who I worked with,

does the voice of Vin Scully on the show a lot,

and it's brilliant.

And Harry and I would talk about over the years

how baseball announcers are hilarious

because they can say whatever they want

as long as they give the count afterwards.

Man, oh man, I am jacked up on heroine right now.

Breaking ball misses outside, one and oh.

So I thought that would be a funny premise for a sketch,

which we made for Funny or Die,

and then developed it into a full blown series

about a very alcoholic, drug-addicted, sex-addicted

insane baseball announcer.

Thanks GQ for sitting in, listening in, looking in

as I blathered on about my career.