25 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About “Daria” To Celebrate Its 25th Anniversary

You're (still) standing on my neck.

Daria turns 25 this year, and to celebrate, I've compiled 25 behind-the-scenes facts about our favorite '90s animated realist.

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1. The character Daria Morgendorffer was meant to be a sharp contrast to the titular characters of Beavis and Butt-Head.

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"We created Daria's character because we wanted a smart female who could serve as the foil," Abby Terkuhle, MTV's former senior vice president and creative director, stated.

Daria popped up in about 20 episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head before moving from Highland to Lawndale, where the spinoff picks up.

2. There's a real Daria out there.

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Daria showrunners Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis said that the character was named after a real girl whose classmates nicknamed her "diarrhea." 

(Sidenote: As someone who was regularly called "Daria" in high school, I continue to be grateful that no one took that extra step.)

3. Mike Judge had no involvement with Daria.

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Though he created Beavis and Butt-Head, he wasn't interested in the spinoff, but gave his blessing to go ahead with it (provided he wouldn't have to do anything). He later revealed he's only ever watched a few minutes of it.

4. Daria almost didn't happen.

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MTV representatives approached Glenn Eichler, then a story editor for Beavis and Butt-Head, to create a spinoff about Daria in the hopes of attracting more female viewers.

Eichler and Beavis and Butt-Head alums Lewis, Karen Disher, Sam Johnson, and Chris Marcil, put together a short pilot, which was pitched to MTV alongside several other animated shows. 

Daria performed best with the focus groups, though execs didn't love that middle school kids were so drawn to it. They wanted the show to appeal to college-aged kids, but Eichler and co. convinced them that college students didn't watch that much TV. They ended up with a 13-episode season order.

5. It's the Frasier to Beavis and Butt-Head's Cheers.

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"You’re taking the smartest character from this goofy world and you’re trying to do a show that’s true to that character, not so much true to the world it’s from,” Daria writer Chris Marcil told Paste Magazine.

(I guess that makes Quinn the Niles Crane of the show.)

6. Daria was considered something of a poster child for MTV.

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''Even though she is the flip side of Beavis and Butt-Head, she speaks the same language that our young audience speaks,'' Van Toffler, former general manager of MTV, told the New York Times in 1998. ''She has an attitude about parents, school, siblings that is common to the experiences of our audience. She is a good spokesperson for MTV, intelligent but subversive.''

7. Daria and Jane are the only characters to appear in all 65 episodes and both movies.

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Quinn appeared in all but "Jane's Addition" (though she can be heard offscreen at one point).

8. Daria Morgendorffer was Tracy Grandstaff's first (and only major) acting role.

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When the character of Daria was created, Grandstaff was the only female writer on Beavis and Butt-Head and therefore the "default choice" to voice the character. She cites Sara Gilbert, who played Darlene on Roseanne, and comedian Janeane Garofalo as inspiration.

9. Only a few other voice actors were responsible for just one Daria character.

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Julián Rebolledo's only role was Jake Morgendorffer; Jessica Cydnee Jackson voiced Jodie; and Nora Laudani played Miss Li. 

(Alvaro J. Gonzalez stuck almost entirely to playing Jane's brother Trent, outside of an early episode in which he voiced an art critic.)

10. Helen and Quinn Morgendorffer and Jane Lane are all voiced by the same person.

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Wendy Hoopes, who plays Daria's mom, sister, and best friend, originally tried to get a role on Beavis and Butt-Head. Daria ended up being her first voice-acting gig.

11. A lot of the other Daria voice actors regularly played multiple roles.

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Kevin Thompson, Mr. DeMartino, Mr. O’Neill, and Jamie were all voiced by Marc Thompson (who also played Upchuck in Season 1).

Lisa Collins voiced Brittany Taylor, Sandi Griffin, and Andrea (plus Sandi's mother Linda and one of the Sick, Sad World reporters), while Ashley Paige Albert voiced Ms. Barch and Tiffany Blum-Deckler.

12. There are some famous faces among the voice cast of Daria.

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500 Days of Summer, Super Troopers, and Garden State star Geoffrey Arend provided the voice of Charles "Upchuck" Ruttheimer III starting in Season 2.

13. A member of the Fashion Club was voiced by a Grey's Anatomy star.

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Sarah Drew was the voice of Stacy Rowe.

14. Carson Daly, Bif Naked, and Dave Grohl voiced characters in the first Daria movie, Is It Fall Yet?

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Daly played Quinn's tutor/crush David, Bif Naked played Jane's sort of friend Alison, and Grohl played artist/creep Daniel.

15. Each episode took 10 months to produce.

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35 animation artists worked on each half-hour episode.

16. Brittany's looks were modeled after Jenny McCarthy in Singled Out.

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And Lisa Collins based the character's voice on Loretta in Cheers.

17. Other celebrities subtly found their way into the show.

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Some of Brittany's fellow cheerleaders were based on Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Katie Holmes.

James Van Der Beek, Scott Foley, and Nicholas Brendon also served as the inspiration for some of the guys the Fashion Club went out with.

18. The writers looked to teen magazines for slang.

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"In the episode I just wrote, we used the word 'jiggy,'" writer Nina Beeber said. "And this sounds pathetically white-bread and thirtysomething, but I think I found it on the editorial page of Jane magazine and thought: 'Huh. Why not use that, whatever that is?'"

(The episode in question features Val, a magazine editor in her 30s who's desperate to be part of youth culture.)

19. The Mystik Spiral spinoff that could've been...

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Glenn Eichler wrote a pilot script to pitch a spinoff show about Trent Lane's band, but MTV shut down its animation unit before anything could happen with the show. Maybe it's for the best, though, since the band probably would've changed their name every episode.

If you're curious about the script, you can find it in the Daria DVD box set.

20. Speaking of music...

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If you watched Daria during its original run, you know it had a killer soundtrack. It was a wild mix of mainstream and indie music, and the genres were all over the place. The first season alone featured major artists like Radiohead, The Spice Girls, LL Cool J, and Celine Dion, as well as lesser-known ones like Kula Shaker, Livin' Joy, Dishwalla, and Dis-n-Dat.

Sounds expensive, right? Not at first. At the time, the show's creators had access to all this music for free(!), thanks to MTV. But once it was time to put Daria on DVD (and eventually iTunes and streaming sites like Hulu and Paramount+), the music became something of a flashpoint.

Glenn Eichler explained to Collider that almost all of the music had to be swapped for stock songs because it just would have been too much money otherwise. 

"The cost of licensing the many music bites we used would have made it impossible to release the collection (and for many years did)," he said, likening the effect of the generic replacement music to a Twilight Zone episode where an astronaut's wife knows something is different about him, but can't quite figure out what.

Those who have only watched Daria in recent years won't experience this — they might just think the music sounds kind of...uncool for a show that is supposed to be pretty cool. They might wonder why in one episode, DJ Upchuck is clearly about to play the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of "Love Rollercoaster," only to play...a song that sounds nothing like it. 

The rest of us, meanwhile, will rewatch the show and, like Proust biting into a madeleine, remember so clearly the song that should be there that we might as well be right back in 1998.

21. The theme song is a family affair.

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Splendora, the masterminds behind "You're Standing on My Neck," was fronted by sisters Janet and Tricia Wygal. They ended up landing the Daria gig when the band's cellist, Cindy Brolsma, who was working as a producer on the show, shared some of their music with the showrunners.

22. There were three other options for the theme.

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Splendora wrote and recorded four tracks for the show, making sure to include certain phrases the producers asked them to use.

Obviously, "You're Standing on My Neck" won out, and while there's no arguing that it's a perfect match for the show, I'd love to hear what else the band came up with.

23. Splendora created two other songs for Daria.

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One was for Is It Fall Yet? and the other was Is It College Yet?

24. In 2017, Susie Lewis revealed what she thinks Daria and the gang would be up to now.

Amanduh @_amanduh_92

I'm watching Daria for the first time ever. I wonder what adult Daria is up to 🤔

05:20 PM - 15 May 2020

Twitter: @_amanduh_92

She told Entertainment Weekly that Daria is the "only female writer on a late-night talk show" in New York City (though hopefully not only anymore, since it's been five years).

Jane, who also lives in NYC, continues to make art and make fun of everything with Daria, while Trent is still a musician and working as a bartender (also in NYC, though he and Daria never got together).

Quinn still lives in Lawndale and is a divorced influencer with triplets, and Helen and Jake are having a blast being retired.

And Brittany, a weatherperson/cheerleading coach, and Kevin, a stay-at-home dad, are married with five kids.

25. If you're wondering about Jodie and Mac, we'll find out soon enough.

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Well, we'll find out about Jodie, anyway. There's a Daria spinoff about her in the works, starring Tracee Ellis Ross. No word on whether we'll be seeing Mac as well.

Daria officially turns 25 on March 3. Check out Daria on Paramount+ (minus the movies) or get the DVD box set here.