MTV Misery Queen ‘Daria’ Voiced By One of Kalamazoo’s Own

Premiering on MTV in 1997 Daria ranks among the top 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time.

Our favorite angst queen and original "misery chick" Daria Morgendorffer said and thought it all, so we didn't have to.

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And by "we" I mean us Gen Xers and Millennials who remember a time when MTV played anything other than Ridiculousness! Oh, and music videos too.

In an effort to relive my youth I was recently listening to former MTV VJ Dave Holmes' podcast Who Killed the Video Star? The Story of MTV while tidying up my apartment when I stopped in my tracks. "Did he just say Kalamazoo, Michigan?"

The host was referring to one of the writers of the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards show, Tracy Grandstaff, who hails from Kalamazoo. I'm thinking to myself "Wait, I'M in Kalamazoo right now!"

Of course, the first thing I did was search Tracy online but aside from her major career milestone as the voice of Daria Morgendorffer most of her credits are behind-the-scenes for writing.

While it's unclear if Tracy was born here, we know that she went to school in Kalamazoo and her father was a WMU theatre professor. Could Tracy be an alum too? As for the fortuitous way Daria came into her life Grandstaff told VICE,

I was the only female writer on the Beavis staff at the time, so I was the default choice [for Daria]. Janeane Garofalo from the Ben Stiller Show [was a Daria influence] for sure, as well as my own personal inner dialogue from junior high and high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan—and Sara Gilbert from Roseanne, probably more than anyone.

Even as recently as 2020 there was talking of bringing the series back as a spinoff titled Jodie. As for the real Daria, Grandstaff appears to currently be living on the east coast and working as an exec at Comedy Central in New Jersey.