Hank Azaria Says The Simpsons' Rate of Predictions Success Is Actually "Not That High"

Any time a real-world event mirrors a joke from an episode of The Simpsons, fans are quick to point out that the animated series seemingly "predicted" such an incident coming true, but according to star Hank Azaria, there are thousands of jokes that never come true so the rate of accuracy of these predictions is lower than people realize. Additionally, he pointed out that the whole point of the series is to poke fun at society and anticipate the eventual outcome of real-world reactions, with fans having more than three decades of jokes to sift through to find correct guesses. Azaria can next be seen in Apple TV+'s Hello Tomorrow!, which premieres on February 17th.

When asked by ComicBook.com what predictions most surprised him, Azaria recalled, "Well the Trump [becoming president] one was pretty freaky. People have gotten excited about this, but we're a social satire that often comes from the point of view of, 'Well, if we keep going like this, here's what's going to happen.' And the show has made, like, 7,482 predictions and 12 have come true, so, actually, our rate of success is not that high, really."

One writer on the series, Bill Oakley, previously recalled how history has a way of repeating itself, so when the series embraces events from previous decades, these occurrences have a way of circling back around to become relevant again.

"There are very few cases where The Simpsons predicted something," Oakley recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. "It's mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself. Most of these episodes are based on things that happened in the '60s, '70s, or '80s that we knew about."  

Azaria's new series similarly blends the past with a contemporary sensibility.

Set in a retro-future world, Hello Tomorrow! centers around a group of traveling salesmen hawking lunar timeshares. Emmy and Critics Choice Award winner Billy Crudup (The Morning Show) stars as Jack, a salesman of great talent and ambition, whose unshakeable faith in a brighter tomorrow inspires his coworkers, revitalizes his desperate customers, but threatens to leave him dangerously lost in the very dream that sustains him.

The ensemble cast starring alongside Crudup includes Haneefah Wood (Truth Be Told, One Day at a Time), Alison Pill (Them, The Newsroom), Nicholas Podany (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Dewshane Williams (The Umbrella Academy, In the Dark), Emmy Award winner Hank Azaria (Brockmire, Ray Donovan), Matthew Maher (Our Flag Means Death), and Academy Award nominee Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook, Animal Kingdom).

Hello Tomorrow! premieres on February 17th.

What do you think of the actor's remarks? Let us know in the comments!