What You Should Know About Hank Azaria

A Panoply of Eccentric Biographical Data Re: the Voice(S) of His Generation.

- David Kamp

You already know him by ear, as the vocally limber virtuoso behind such Simpsons characters as Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Apu, and Comic Book Guy. And you might recognize him as the buff, infrequently clothed Guatemalan houseboy in The Birdcage, or as the buff, infrequently clothed French scuba instructor in Along Came Polly—or, perhaps, as the ethically compromised F.B.I. agent who locked horns with Liev Schreiber’s title character in Ray Donovan. But this month Hank Azaria at last assumes deserved leading-man status in a live-action comedy program, namely IFC’s TV series Brockmire. Based on a 2010 Funny or Die short in which Azaria portrayed a regionally beloved baseball play-by-play man who suffered a spectacular fall from grace (involving his discovery of his wife’s infidelity, the ingestion of too much booze, and a profane over-the-air meltdown), the new show finds Jim Brockmire attempting to rebuild his life as the P.A. announcer for a Rust Belt minor-league team whose wily owner (played by Amanda Peet) sees Brockmire’s very unpredictability as a potential means of ginning up fan interest. Its dark barfly humor leavened by its central character’s deranged-yet-plausible patter (“Folks, that ball cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery because it just got tattooed!”), Brockmire is the Hank Azaria vehicle we’ve been waiting for. Herewith, some facts and insights gleaned from a breakfast with the man behind the mike.