“King of the Hill” is back with Season 14, and some characters have changed quite a bit. Hank Hill (Mike Judge) might be trying to navigate apps, but he’s still the same old guy that fans love. Others have been put through the wringer, such as Kahn Souphanousinphone, who’s now divorced from his wife Minh (Lauren Tom) and living in the garage as they try to keep the separation a secret. But that’s not the only change that Hank’s Laotian neighbor has gone through.
In the show’s original run, Kahn was voiced by Toby Huss, who voiced numerous “King of the Hill” characters, like Cotton Hill and Joe Jack. For Season 14, Ronny Chieng is now voicing the character, and it’s part of a Hollywood-wide push toward having animated characters voiced by people of corresponding ethnicity. This was always going to be the case with the revival, as co-creator Greg Daniels told TVLine back in 2023. At that point, he was unsure if Kahn would even return, but he stated, “I think we would most likely replace Toby’s voice for Kahn. Like, if we were casting today, we wouldn’t have cast him. But we cast it in 1997.”
Kahn’s recasting is part of a wider trend of making sure there’s great voice acting work for minority groups that really started kicking off after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Ayo Edebiri replaced Jenny Slate voicing Missy in “Big Mouth” and “The Simpsons” has Black actors voicing its Black characters now, like Kevin Michael Richardson now playing Dr. Hibbert instead of Harry Shearer. While Chieng is Malaysian, not Laotian like Kahn, the creators clearly felt it was important for Kahn to be voiced by an actor from South East Asia.
Dale Gribble also has a new voice actor following Johnny Hardwick’s tragic death
Kahn isn’t the only “King of the Hill” character to get a new voice actor in the revival: Johnny Hardwick tragically died in August 2023 aged 64. Hardwick voiced fan-favorite Dale Gribble — another one of Hank’s neighbors who’s an exterminator by day and a conspiracy theorist, well, pretty much all the time — during the show’s original run. Fans can still hear some of the late actor’s work on the new season, as Hardwick recorded a couple of episodes for the “King of the Hill” revival before he died. The remainder of Dale’s lines were done by Toby Huss, Kahn’s former voice actor.
Reactions to the voice changes have been decidedly mixed online. Hardcore fans will always be upset at any slight change, but for what it’s worth, a good amount of viewers do seem to think Huss sounds pretty similar to Hardwick’s Dale. X user @SKRollins wrote, “Toby Huss does a pretty good Dale ngl. Like 90 per cent there when he’s talking at normal volume.” Two “King of the Hill” staples who have not been recast are Luanne and Lucky, who were voiced by Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty, respectively. They don’t appear in Season 14 at all due to both actors dying following the show’s initial cancellation, but the “King of the Hill” revival does pay tribute to them in a special way.
“King of the Hill” Season 14 is now streaming on Hulu
