Roberta Coretta Tubbs is the eldest child of Donna Tubbs-Brown and her ex-husband Robert Tubbs, stepdaughter of Cleveland Brown, and a main character on the Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show, which premiered September 27, 2009. She is named for her father. Nia Long voiced her for the first thirteen episodes; Reagan Gomez-Preston took over afterward. On that series she is a popular high-school girl in Stoolbend, sharp-tongued, image-conscious, and usually attached to her boyfriend Federline Jones, a relationship she breaks and restarts whenever she is bored. She is not in the Family Guy episode The Splendid Source; her proper arrival in Quahog comes later.
Her important development on The Cleveland Show is the adjustment to Cleveland and to her stepbrother Cleveland Jr. She and her younger brother Rallo start out unimpressed by the new household, and she is regularly embarrassed by Cleveland at school functions, including the father-daughter dance in Da Doggone Daddy-Daughter Dinner Dance. Over the run she accepts him, takes his side when it counts, and shows a reluctant softer streak with Junior, as in Love Rollercoaster, where a fat-suit disguise meant to prove she can get by without her looks also keeps her from hurting Junior. Stories about Federline, her neglectful biological father, and her desire to be near someone like Tyra Banks fill out a teenager who is vain and difficult without being only that. When the spinoff ends, the family is written back into Family Guy.
In the Family Guy episode He’s Bla-ack!, which aired in 2014, Roberta returns to Quahog with Donna, Rallo, and the Browns and is briefly folded into a high-school plot involving Connie D’Amico and Meg before settling into the background. Subsequent Family Guy appearances, including holiday dinners and crowd scenes, are mostly non-speaking cameos, a sharp reduction from her role as a lead on the spinoff. The character’s real arc sits in The Cleveland Show: the popular daughter of a broken home who rolls her eyes at her stepfather, dates the wrong boy, and gradually, grudgingly, becomes part of his family.