Christine Haveford
90’s kids rejoice!
Daria is back – but in a super cool spin off version.
Our favorite girlfriend, Tracee Ellis Ross, has come aboard to star in and executive produce Jodie.
Jodie will be the first of several spin-offs of from Daria, the popular MTV cartoon that ran from 1997 to 2002.
Ellis Ross told Vanity Fair in an interview that the show, “was the perfect mash-up of all of the things that I want represented in the world.”
Tracee went on to tell the publication, “I was in before we even sat down. They felt that I would be the right voice to bring Jodie to life, and I was like, ‘whaaaaat?”
Now, she is set to both star in and produce the cartoon series.
And if you’re fans of the some of the many other Daria characters, you’re in luck. MTV have also revealed that “other former students of Lawndale High will also appear” though no other characters were confirmed.
According to Ross, Jodie, who was the best friend of Daria Morgendorffer in the 90’s sitcom, is exactly the type of character she wants to see on the screen.
In the original show, Jodie Landon is an African-American girl who’s both highly intelligent and extremely popular. The series even ended with Jodie deciding to go to a historically black college instead of an Ivy League.
Wise beyond her years, she told her family she “wanted to stop being the black kid and just be a kid.”
“Jodie was woke before woke was a thing,” Ross remarked.
The character was also noteworthy for how she became such a central piece of the story.
“To have the sidekick character move to the forefront is a real metaphor for what is happening in our culture,” Ross said.
She also noted that “there hasn’t been an adult animated show centered on an African American female character for more than a decade.”
Jodie will be created by Insecure and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt writer Grace Nkenge Edwards.
Fans won’t have missed out on much of Jodie’s life, as the new show will follow on as she graduates from college.
Ross said she “will navigate through all of these different areas, from tech culture to call-out culture to how race and identity makes its way into the workplace and how you start to explore identity when you are becoming an adult, when you’re no longer in the safety of your parents’ home.”
Ross, who is the daughter of superstar Diana Ross, won big in March at the NAACP Image Awards.
She recieved her fifth Outstanding Actress award for her role as Dr. Rainbow ‘Bow’ Johnson on the ABC hit sitcom, Black-ish (2015-2019).
The show also took home the award for Outstanding Comedy Series during the ceremony.
Ross has won the same award two times for her portrayal as Joan Clayton in The CW hit sitcom Girlfriends (2007 and 2009) and once for BET family sitcom Reed Between The Lines (2012).
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