'Daria' Spin-Off Will Star Tracee Ellis Ross As 'Jodie'

Daria and Jodie

Daria first aired on MTV over 22 years ago, on March 3rd, 1997, and in the years since, the show's namesake character, Daria Morgendorffer, has become an avatar for Gen X. The show went off the air in 2002, but last year MTV announced that it had been working on "revivals of properties from [their] extensive content library," and one of those revivals would involve Daria. Today, Variety reports a Daria spin-off is in the works (premiere date TBA), and it will star Tracee Ellis Ross, who is also set to executive produce.

Ellis Ross will play Jodie Abigail Landon, and the new show will be called Jodie. It will bring us into a new decade, with a new generation.:

The series is a reimagining of the classic animated show Daria, and is described as a satire of the post college workplace and personal adventures of Gen Z.

The new series will center around Daria’s good friend Jodie Landon (Ellis Ross), an African American character from the original series. Viewers will follow her as she comes into her own and enters the workplace in her first post-college job in tech. Other former students from Lawndale High School will also appear.

Ellis Ross says the series will "feature a diverse cast, comprised mainly of unapologetically smart and ambitious young female characters who are vulnerable and flawed and interesting and funny," and notes it will also be "the first adult animated show in almost 20 years that will star a black woman."

When the series ended, Vanity Fair notes, Jodie "decided to attend a historically black college instead of an Ivy League university, telling her parents she 'wanted to stop being the black kid and just be a kid.'" Ellis Ross says Jodie was "woke before woke was a thing!" Here she is in the '90s: