‘Of course we’d come back’: the voices of Daria on its legacy – and future

Daria creator Tracy Grandstaff: ‘It’s relatable for people who, like myself in high school, just didn’t quite understand what the rules were.’ Photograph: MTV/Allstar

Back in the late 90s, when MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head had reached dizzying heights of sniggering virality, one of its ancillary characters – a bespectacled teenage girl named Daria – somehow got a spin-off. If Beavis and Butt-Head was Cheers, Daria was its Frasier.

“I was the only female writer at the time on Beavis and Butt-Head,” says Tracy Grandstaff, whose fantastically dry delivery brought Daria Morgendorffer to life. “We’re all sitting in the writers’ room. Because we had zero money, they’d ask me to go into the booth and voice various characters.”