Hank Azaria Explains Why He Won't Do Commercials On The Howard Stern Show

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Today on The Howard Stern Show, Hank Azaria was on to discuss his new project, Brockmire, which is premiering this Wednesday on IFC.

Hank Azaria Gets Fired From His First Job

The first thing that Howard Stern and Hank Azaria discussed was Hank's first job.

Hank got a job as a bartender right out of college, while he was hoping for a job as an actor. Unlike other bartenders, he was very honest, and refused to give drinks to any of the people on shift.

Unfortunately, Hank got fired very quickly because he left his shift without locking any of the doors, and the restaurant ended up being robbed.

Hank explained that when he was growing up, he watched a lot of TV and he did a lot of voices, but he didn't realize that doing voices was something special - he thought everybody could do them.

After he got fired from the bartending job, Hank managed to get a role in a cartoon called Hollywood dog, which never actually aired, but the casting director for that show recommended Hank for the Simpsons.

Hank Azaria Explains Where the Simpsons Characters Come From

Hank and Howard Stern went on to discuss the Simpsons, and how Hank came up with all of the characters from the show.

Hank originally went in for a read for the job of Moe, and did a "bad" impression of Al Pacino. There had actually been another voice actor who did Moe, but he apparently got fired because he was a jerk.

That actor used to do the voices for G.I. Joe, and he apparently flipped out because he thought he was too good for the Simpsons.

For Apu, Hank tried to mimic some of the Indian kids he knew, as well as the guy the 7/11.

For snake, Hank copied a guy he went to college with, who used to talk about all the drugs he was doing.

And for comic book guy, Hank did the voice of a guy who lived next door to him in college.

Hank Azaria Talks Salary With Howard Stern

Howard Stern asked Hank about his salary and how the negotiations went with Fox. Hank explained that he's currently making around $300,000 per episode, although at one point the cast asked for closer to $500,000.

Although Hank says that he's contractually bound not to talk about it, he did say that Fox had gone to casting and planned to fire all of the actors, before coming to an agreement.

He said that he was one of the people who were happier with his current salary, although given the amount of money the show was making, they were making only a tiny fraction of it.

Hank said that he learned the negotiating tactic from friends.

He also explained that he wanted to be an actor on friends playing Joey, but he didn't get the role. He said he was very jealous of Matthew Perry, who was one of his close friends.

Why Hank Azaria Won't Do Commercials

When Hank was just starting out with the Simpsons, he realized that he could make some real money doing voiceovers. So he got into commercials.

But it turned out that doing commercials wasn't enjoyable, and he had to drive all over LA to get the auditions. Eventually got really tired of it.

At one point, he was auditioning for a role as a Jell-O bowl man.

He tried to do a gruff New York voice for the Jell-O bowl, but the woman doing the audition explained to him that his voice would scare children.

She was more of a Disney woman, and she tried to coach him into doing the voice she wanted, but Hank responded "you know he's not real, right?"

After that, he walked out and refused to do any more commercials.

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