Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer has given a blunt answer as to whether he still enjoys working on the long-running animated series.
Shearer, 81, has worked on The Simpsons since 1989 and voices several iconic characters on the show, including Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders.
The Simpsons has now aired 790 episodes and a deal was recently signed to extend its run for at least four more seasons.
Shearer has worked on 786 of those episodes and was recently asked by Rolling Stone if he still enjoyed working on the show. “It’s okay,” he succintly replied.
Elsewhere in the interview, Shearer was asked about a speculation in 2015 that he was due to leave the show after rejecting a new contract from Fox.
Shearer had cryptically tweeted: “From James L. Brooks’ lawyer: ‘Show will go on, Harry will not be part of it, wish him the best.’” However, months later, Fox announced that Shearer would be returning after he signed a new deal.
“First of all, I didn’t leave, nor did I threaten to leave,” he said when asked about the incident. “They threatened to carry on without me. It was a phone call from a lawyer saying: ‘If you don’t sign this contract by five o’clock Friday, you’re off the show.’ All I did was republish that letter. So that’s where that came from.”
Shearer also said that he wasn’t worried about the show using AI in the future, because the technology is unable to replace the range of emotions an actor can create.
“You can get a kind of halfway satisfactory performance with that technology,” he said. “I don’t think you can get a really original and overpowering performance. Or overpoweringly funny performance, in the case of comedy.”
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Meanwhile, Shearer is busy promoting his new movie Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues, which picks up the story of the hapless fictional rock group famously depicted in the 1984 film This is Spinal Tap.
Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean all reprise their roles in the film, which also features cameos from music giants such as Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John.
In a two-star review, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “While the camaraderie between these performers is alive as ever, by losing that kind of specificity, The End Continues is reduced to circular arguments over whether a song has ‘la’s or ‘ah’s after the chorus and whether the prop buttocks dangling over the stage should emit a puff of smoke.”
