Popverse's top stories

• Avengers: Doomsday is already ignoring one of the biggest lessons of the success of James Gunn’s Superman
• What to Watch This Weekend: All the Alien movies before Alien: Earth next week
• Luigi Mangione is "a story about the American Dream Gone Wrong," says James Patterson, and he's writing a book to prove it

King of the Hill is back for a new season on Hulu, with many of the original cast members coming along for the ride. However, one returning voice actor is playing an entirely different role.

The original series featured Toby Huss as Hank Hill’s Laotian neighbor Kahn Souphanousinphone. At the time, it wasn't considered unusual by the general public in having a white man voice a minority character in a cartoon. However, documentaries like The Problem with Apu have sparked a cultural conversation about white actors playing non-white characters.

According to King of the Hill showrunner Saladin Patterson, there was no question that Kahns should be recast.

“It wasn’t necessarily a debate,” Patterson says during a conversation with Popverse. “Times have changed, and I think we have a different lens on casting now. King of the Hill, having always been such a grounded show, I think, is a prime example of the type of show that would also try to cast more authentically now.”

Kahn is now voiced by Ronny Chieng, a Malaysian actor.

“We were blessed that Ronny Chieng was also a fan of the original, and was able to step into the Kahn role, and play in a way that was funny and with a lot of heart. The same with the casting of Joseph, and thankfully Lauren [Tom] was still available to play Connie as an adult. That feels like it only adds to the richness of the portrayals and we’re happy about that.”

Although Toby Huss is no longer playing Kahn, he’s still an integral part of the show. Huss is now voicing Dale Gribble, a role played by Johnny Hardwick before he passed in 2023. Hardwick recorded the first six episodes before passing away, while the rest of the season features Huss in the role.

“I didn’t do Dale before,” Huss says during a conversation with Popverse. “This was a really unique opportunity to jump into a character that I had watched Johnny form over all those years, because he didn’t start out as an actor. Johnny was a standup, and just a writer, and a goofball. And to watch him there acting, sometimes I would watch him and go, ‘What the fuck is this guy doing?’ Sometimes he would act with a cigarette. He wouldn’t smoke, but he would have a cigarette in his hand, and he would scream and do his thing.”

“He was really diving deep into this character he created. So, it was great to watch it all those years, so I think I had some inside baseball knowledge on how he put it together, so I was able to try to hold on to that and doing it going forward.”

King of the Hill is streaming on Hulu.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions