List of The Cleveland Show characters


This is a list of characters in the Fox television series The Cleveland Show.

Main characters

Cleveland Brown

Cleveland Brown is the protagonist of the series. He is a portly 46-year-old African-American man who is very polite to everyone and has a unique laugh. He was formerly one of Peter Griffin's best friends in Family Guy and also owned and ran a deli. In "Pilot" he moves to the town of Stoolbend, Virginia to show his son where he grew up. Eventually re-sparking his relationship with her, they get married and he and his son move in with her and her two children. Cleveland is usually depicted as exceedingly gentle and patient, and it is only on rare occasions that he has been known to lose his temper and resort to violence. However, Cleveland gets visibly annoyed with racist behavior. He often acts as the voice of caution when other characters hatch harebrained schemes. Cleveland's speech is slow and almost elongated in Family Guy, but in The Cleveland Show his voice has a wide variety. Various flashbacks give conflicting histories of his speech patterns. He is shown as a more sexual, stupid, and violent character in his new form than he was originally.

Donna Tubbs-Brown

Donna Tubbs Brown, voiced by Sanaa Lathan, is the second wife of Cleveland Brown who is 46 years old and works as the principal's secretary at Stoolbend High School. She has two biological children from her previous relationship with Robert, Roberta and Rallo, and she has kept her maiden name. As a result of her marriage to Cleveland, she has adopted a third child, his son Cleveland Brown Jr.
Donna and Cleveland were initially best friends in high school, although Cleveland clearly had romantic feelings towards her. Donna unfortunately was for the most part oblivious to his feelings, and instead dated Cleveland's unofficial rival Robert. Despite Cleveland's attempts to get Donna to see Robert for what he truly was, Donna ended up marrying Robert shortly after graduation. Seeing no reason to remain, Cleveland left Stoolbend and Donna behind.
Despite many attempts at making their marriage work, Donna and Robert ended up separating due to Robert's heavy drinking and drug abuse, leaving Donna to raise their children alone. Robert would visit occasionally, but more out of selfish desire than any familial reasons. After years apart, Donna was of course overjoyed to see her best friend, Cleveland again. Cleveland and his son, who were passing through Stoolbend while driving to California, had stopped by the high school to retrace Cleveland's old haunting grounds. Donna invites the Browns to stay at her house, which results in a rekindling of their friendship that soon blossoms into a full-blown romance. The two soon marry, and honeymoon in New York City a few months later.
Having been friends for years prior to getting married, Cleveland and Donna have a close relationship both sexually and platonically. Donna comes off much more patient and understanding than Cleveland's first wife, Loretta, and is more attentive to him as well. Her relationship with her children meanwhile is somewhat more shaky, as both her children are the result of a broken home and neglectful father. Donna does her best to keep her children under control, but is aware that they need a father figure at times. Yet despite any issues that she and her kids have, it is clear that they care for one another. Donna's relationship with Cleveland Jr. meanwhile is underdeveloped yet, save for the fact that Cleveland Jr. is quick to do what he can to follow Donna's wishes for fear of another divorce occurring. It is also implied that he sees Donna as the mother figure that Loretta should've been. However, she has shown to be willing to protect him from danger, such as when she saved him from an ax-wielding Donny in "A Nightmare on Grace Street" by throwing a wine glass at his head.
She takes care of odd jobs, assisting Principal Wally when he is indisposed and serving as a secretary of sorts.
She is shown with an extremely large posterior, that is joked about often in the series.
She tends to drink a lot of wine to the point she might be an alcoholic.
She is a talented and proud Recorder player and wears a wig that hides her gray hair.
She is quick-tempered.
In "Mama Drama", it is revealed that her mother is Dee Dee Tubbs who was part of a band in the 1960s until she left Donna with Uncle Kevin. The two of them reunited by the end of the episode.

Cleveland Brown Jr.

Cleveland Brown Jr., also referred to as just Junior and also Cleveland Raj Rerun Dwayne Brown, is the obese 14-year-old biological son of Cleveland Brown and his late ex-wife Loretta. He debuted in the season 2 episode "Love Thy Trophy" on the animated TV show Family Guy. During his time in Family Guy he was shown to be skinny, hyperactive, and athletic. He was presumably taken into Loretta's custody after she divorced Cleveland in "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire" and has since become severely obese. He suffers from mild seizure-like episodes which he refers to as "brainstorms" and takes medication to control them. It was revealed in the episode "The Hurricane!" that he "doesn't believe in God", although he claims he is not an atheist either, which he calls "another religion". His voice is the mixture of Miss Piggy's voice and Bernie Mac's voice stuck together in this show.

Roberta Tubbs

Roberta Coretta Tubbs is the 15-year-old biological daughter of Donna and her ex-husband, Robert. She looks up to Tyra Banks, hoping to one day become her co-hostess. A relatively popular girl in school, Roberta is often seen socializing with her friends, both in person, and using phones, or social networking websites. She has been dating a less than respectable boy by the name of Federline Jones, who Donna does not much approve of, but who Cleveland has managed to bully into submission. As with many popular students, Roberta often acts as a bully and a self-centered character, even towards her own family members.
Neither Roberta nor her brother Rallo are initially pleased with the arrival of Cleveland and Cleveland Brown Jr., though both appear to accept their mother marrying Cleveland without much issue. In fact, Roberta and Cleveland seem to fall into a rather stereotypical father/daughter relationship, with Roberta being embarrassed by her stepfather's behavior when he attends social functions at her school. Eventually she accepts Cleveland as her father.
Roberta seems to have a love/hate relationship with her brother Rallo. In the first episode, Roberta reneges on her responsibility to babysit him in order to go out with her friends. However, she seems able to share plenty of witty dialogue with her brother, apparently seeing him as something of an intellectual equal, despite his age. Roberta's relationship with Cleveland Jr. has shown promise of being a decently caring one, despite a shaky beginning. Initially both Roberta and Rallo are disturbed by how clean and attentive Cleveland Jr. is in regards to Donna's parental requests. Initially annoyed at him making them look bad and did all they could to make him miserable, they become sympathetic when they realize that he never accepted his parents' divorce and showing resentment towards his own mother for her adulterous affair and has been doing all he can to avoid giving into his sorrow. Together, Rallo and Roberta do all they can to help Cleveland Jr. let his feelings out and at the same time, they accept him as their brother. Despite her occasional kindness towards him however, Roberta regularly tends to neglect and distance from Junior and even bully him with the other popular students out of selfishness and/or on behalf of her own social structure and goals, even accusing him of stealing a chocolate bar over Rallo. She can also talk like Robert, although she seems a bit resentful of his failures as a parent compared to the sense of hero worship Rallo feels toward him. Roberta seems to have an archrival in Lacey Stapleton. Her usual clothing is a green tube top with blue jeans, gold hoop earrings and necklace and bracelets, and white and black-striped sneakers. She also wears white pearl earrings and her hair has a white streak in it. She wears pink lipstick.

Rallo Tubbs

Montclair "Rallo" Tubbs is the 5-year-old biological son of Donna and her ex-husband, Robert. He has one biological sister, Roberta. As a result of his mother marrying Cleveland, Rallo has gained Cleveland Brown Jr. as a stepbrother, Rallo has a light blue shirt with dark blue shorts and red sneakers and he sports a black Afro. His best friends are Julius and Walt.
Despite his age, and the fact his father has been mostly absent most of his life, Rallo acts much like Robert, behaving at times very articulate, yet hormonally charged. He seems to get along fairly well with his mother Donna and has a normal love/hate relationship with Roberta, who at times seems to neglect him, yet at other times speaks to him as if an intellectual equal.
Rallo frequently runs errands for his mother but never remembers to get the change. As a result, he is able to save enough money to buy a 1967 Mustang on eBay. His childlike defiance and hyperactive mischief when being tended to by Roberta was so extreme as to scare her away from sex, lest she risk creating anything like him. The fact that Rallo is some sort of child prodigy makes him an analogue of Cleveland's former neighbor, Stewie Griffin.
With the new arrivals of Cleveland and Cleveland Jr., Rallo has shown some initial reluctance to accept both into his life, actively insulting them, such as joking about their weight. However, he warms up to Cleveland, who manages to teach him how to handle checking out the girls in his kindergarten class. When Cleveland inadvertently kills the family dog, Rallo is devastated by the loss, but comes to respect Cleveland for all the work he did in trying to "find him" when Rallo thought the dog was merely missing, as well as the effort Cleveland put into trying to be a good parent to Roberta.
Despite being younger than his new stepbrother Cleveland Jr. Rallo seems to take a more aggressive hand in their interaction, openly insulting Junior. However, this seems to just be Rallo's way of addressing people in general, and not done with any intentional malice. In "Birth of a Salesman," both Roberta and Rallo are disturbed by how clean and attentive Cleveland Jr. is in regards to Donna's parental requests. Initially annoyed at him making them look bad, they become sympathetic when they realize that he never accepted his parents' divorce, and has been doing all he can to avoid giving into his sorrow. Together Rallo and Roberta do all they can to help Cleveland Jr. let his feelings out and at the same time, they accept him as their brother.
Rallo seems to somewhat value cleanliness and etiquette from houseguests, as demonstrated by his indignant reaction to Cleveland and Cleveland Jr., not making their beds after staying the night with the Tubbs family in the pilot.
He was an antisemite, as discovered in "Ladies' Night". After befriending a Jewish senior citizen in "Murray Christmas", even going so far to celebrating Hanukah with him, it appears that he no longer is. His antisemitism is contradicted by his affection toward his stereotypically Jewish teacher, Mrs. Hadassah Lowenstein, to whom he declared, "You mean the world to me. The world to me!"
In one episode, he becomes racist towards white people after learning of the history of slavery in the United States. Rallo then go on rants to kill and harm white people, but changes his stance once he sees that the Krinklesac family are not racists, are not responsible for owning slaves and actually enjoy many of the same activities and foods as himself.
His favorite meal consists of fish sticks and Tater Tots, and, before his stepfather moved in, he sat at the head of the dinner table.
Donna mentions in "Brotherly Love" that Rallo takes diarrhea medicine.
In the episode "American Pranksters", Cleveland asks Donna why his name is Rallo. Donna replies to that question by stating it was from "That guy from Sanford and Son".

Brown/Tubbs relatives

A number of characters in the show live on the same street as the Brown family. All were seen attending the wedding of Cleveland and Donna Brown.

Bear family

Waterman Cable