A few years ago at the airport, Matt Groening was steered into the Transportation Security Administration’s secondary screening line and told to remove the contents of his luggage. Then he heard a child’s laugh ring out, in the unmistakable taunting tones of Simpsons bully Nelson Muntz: “Ha-ha.”
“I don’t know if it was just the kid acting like the character, or if the kid knew who I was and was really rubbing it in,” Groening said in a recent phone interview.
Either way, the incident says something about Groening’s legacy and the ubiquity of his creation.
Thirty-nine years after a certain scraggily drawn cartoon family first appeared on television, as part of Fox’s The Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons recently aired its 800th episode on the network.
In a recent conversation, Groening spoke about how the show has evolved, the Homers in his own life and why there is no end in sight for the series.
“I’m not going to be the guy that says it’s over,” he said.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
I think of The Simpsons as a forum for different comedy styles. There are so many different kinds of jokes in the show. If the show had stayed consistent with my earliest vision, which was generally much more mild and not as crazy, I don’t know that it would still be on the air.
We reinvent the show over and over again, and the writers and animators are trying to surprise themselves over and over again. That keeps it fresh.
I was startled by how popular the show was all over the world. It is extremely popular in basically every English-speaking country, but it’s got probably even more intense devotion in Central and South America.
I was in Buenos Aires several years back. There’s Simpsons graffiti all over the place, and I was recognised on the street. That was amazing.
When my son was really small and I was wheeling him around in a stroller, people would say: “Oh, what a cute baby. What’s his name?” I’d say Homer. And then they would laugh.
I wanted to make it up to my father that I had named this idiot after him. My father was nothing like Homer. He was really smart and athletic, and he was a war hero. He was a B-17 pilot in World War II. He made surfing movies in the ’60s and cartoons and was a huge inspiration to me.
The only thing that bothered him about Homer Simpson was if he was ever mean to Marge. There was an episode in which their car broke down in the desert, and Homer made Marge carry the flat tire back to the town. He said, “Homer should not have done that.” And he was really serious.
About 15 years ago I was asked this question, and I said, “We’re probably closer to the end than the beginning.” And then headlines around the world were saying that The Simpsons was cancelled. So I have learned to say there is no end in sight. We’re still having a good time.
One of the fun things about my projects is that they don’t seem to end. The Simpsons keeps going. Futurama has come and gone and come again. And who knows what’s coming? It’s always surprising.
I’m trying to figure out what my epitaph is going to be on my gravestone. There’s still that to come. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
The Simpsons is available on Disney+
