Simpsons 500th Episode to Star Controversial Julian Assange
Controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently on house arrest in Britain, fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crimes, will join the cast of "The Simpsons" for their milestone 500th episode.
The episode premiering Sunday will see the famous family get booted out of Springfield. The trailer for the show reveals that a town vote will force the family out, with Springfield's Mayor Quimby announcing the result in a public meeting.
It has not yet been revealed how Assange's character will be worked into the story.
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The casting director tracked down Assange, asking him to lend his voice to the show. According to reports, Assange recorded his cameo by phone for the show from a secret location in England.
"Obviously he's a controversial figure and that was discussed before we agreed to let him do it. But it's a funny cameo and it makes no judgments about the larger case about him," Al Jean, executive producer of "The Simpsons," said in a conference call to the press.
WikiLeaks founder Assange is not the first big name figure to guest star in the show. Celebrities and public figures like Playboy founder of Playboy Hugh Hefner, Mel Gibson, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking and The Beatles have also previously jumped on the bandwagon.
"There's a lot of little touches marking the milestone in the way we like to celebrate and mock something, and then there's a really nice emotional story about the family finding out how their neighbors really feel about them and it's not good and they have to deal with that," said Jean.
The infamous whistleblowing journalist has also been in the headlines recently expressing his displeasure with a first-draft version of an unauthorized memoir on his life titled Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Autobiography.
The book is said to reveal untold information about Assange's younger years, the rise of WikiLieaks, and the Swedish sex scandal that he is facing extradition for.
