Tuca Toucan

**Tuca** is one of the two eponymous characters in *Tuca & Bertie*.

She is voiced by Tiffany Haddish.

## Bio

### Physical Appearance

**Tuca** is a 32 year old 5'0 female toucan. She has a dark blueish grey body with a large white patch around her eye area, and yellow patches on her eyes. Her beak is orange with a black tip on the upper part.

Her everyday attire is a light blue spaghetti-strapped tank top, dark green shorts with white stripes on the sides, and a pair of orange and white lace-up sneakers.

### Personality

**Tuca** is a confident, exuberant, bouncy, wild, and friendly Tucan woman who seems to have a free-spirited approach to life. This approach seems to fill up the void that she has in her life due to her broken family and fears. However, she is not afraid to speak her mind when the line is crossed.

For example, when her Aunt Tallulah states that she is just like her mother, Tuca snaps at her and tells her that her mother was the kindest person. Tuca would not stand for any insult aimed at her mother, proceeding to rip the check she was given.

She also tends to make rash, impulsive decisions at the wrong times, such as buying a jaguar in *The Open House* as a pet to prove to Bertie that she is responsible and tries having joint banking with him.

Despite her flaws, she does know that she always has her best friends, Bertie and Speckle—as her honorary family. She does try to improve herself as a person, even giving up alcohol and sex, to become more responsible.

## Background

### **History**

**Tuca** was born and raised in a house with her single mother, Truly and four siblings—Terry, Desmond, and twins Timbourine and Tamarind, in a small house with very little money to keep them afloat. Her and her siblings’ father hasn’t been mentioned or seen.

According to her Aunt Tallulah, who is very wealthy, in the episode *Plumage**,* the heat was on and off, the children were barefoot most of the time, and were barely supervised. Despite this, her mother kept their hope alive by using her creativity to keep her family together.

However, everything fell apart after she got in a car accident where she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and died while under surgery, which caused Tuca to become depressed and have a fear of doctors.

It is hinted through conversations that Tuca and her siblings went to live with their Aunt Tallulah after their mother's passing. Terry, being the oldest, also had to hold things down after their mother passed, making her a bit resentful of how immature Tuca is even as a grown adult

Soon, the siblings all grew up and moved away, becoming estranged with Tuca for many years. Terry would make all of them do a group phone call on Molting Day, which Tuca dislikes due to the awkwardness and her siblings making fun of her messy apartment.

Being the only one to not get a job in her adulthood, Tallulah would write checks to help Tuca get by.

Ever since she was a preteen when she first started menstruating, Tuca has dealt with severe chronic uterine pain during her periods, giving her severe cramps and mood swings, which get bad enough to the pint on some occasions she has thrown up and/or passed out.

Sometime between high school and college is where she met Bertie and they became best friends. A flashback in The Pain Garden that is shown to take place at least sometime after The Open House states they have been friends for over a decade.

Tuca struggled with alcoholism in her adult years. An incident occurred during a frat party in college that led Tuca to get alcohol poisoning from drinking too much. This incident caused her stomach to be pumped, and not only increased Tuca's fear of the hospital but traumatized Bertie for not being able to do anything.

After Bertie graduated from college and Tuca supposedly dropping out, they moved in and shared an apartment together for six years. Five years prior to the start of Season 2 Bertie met her current boyfriend, Speckle, and they decided to move in together right begins the start of the series, which prompts Tuca to move into the apartment directly above them.

### Season 1

In *The Sugar Bowl*, the episode starts off with thirty-year-old Tuca walking into the Bird Town Park. She enters a park and eats a worm.

She does a back-flip and has various interactions with people in the park. These include a dog playing hacky-sack, a bird person sitting in a tree blowing bubbles, and giving a rose man a rose.

She then walks past a kid bullying another kid by slapping him. The bully then sees a bird girl walking past with ice cream. He then pushes the girl saying, *"mine, mine, mine."*  He then steals the ice cream and declares bullying to be "*cool again*."

Tuca then kicks the ice cream out of the bully's hand and then eats it herself. The bully then declares Tuca is bullying him. She then introduces herself as, "*Tuca-the friend, hero, connoisseur of snacks, confident, relatable, and wearer of short-shorts."*

A crowd of people gathered around Tuca starts cheering.

The bully then groans in frustration saying it was his ice cream. Tuca puts on sunglasses flips onto a bicycle and says, "*life lesson, kiddo-nothing belongs to anyone."* She then proceeds to pedal away as a man says, "H*ey, that's my bike*."

As she leaves the park she calls her best friend Bertie Songthrush who is taking her latest batch of pastries out of the oven. Bertie slips on the kitchen floor dropping both the tray of pastries and her phone.

Bertie is then introduced as, "*a* *professional amateur chef, people pleaser, and a fussbudget."*

She successfully manages to save both the pastry tray and her phone. Bertie then tells Tuca that she misses her. She then puts the tray in the oven and says that she, "*hates change*." She then says that without Tuca the apartment is so quiet and clean. Tuca then says she knows and she is "*so nasty and brings a lot of zest to her environment.*"

Bertie then asks Tuca when she is planning on picking up her last box of stuff. Speckle, Bertie's boyfriend then trips over the cardboard box containing Tuca's things. Tuca says sure, she will pick up her things later, and that she is picking up some decor for her new place.

Bertie then questions, if Tuca is picking up junk from the street side again. Tuca then says no she is buying new things with the money from her job. Bertie then says "*you don't have a job.*" Tuca retorts to this, by saying that just because she doesn't have a "*boring office job*" like Bertie, does not mean she doesn't have a job. She then goes on to list her many jobs as a freelancer including mobile notary, fortune teller, unlicensed tour guide, dog walker, and cashing checks from her rich auntie, mobile notary again, and freelance junk collector.

Tuca then tells Bertie she will be by her place later, to pick up her things.

Bertie then says it'll be weird not being roommates with Tuca any more. Tuca agrees and says the two of them have had many fun times together. There is then a montage of events they shared during their time living together including exterminating bugs, Tuca barging in on Bertie making out with a snake man, and a Halloween party.

Bertie then says they have been through so much and it's the end of an era. Tuca then says she hopes later down the road she and Bertie will live together again. Bertie says she hopes not as she wants things to work out with her boyfriend. Speckle kisses her as she says this. Speckle then stubs his toe and the walks away.

He is then introduced as "*An architect, the boyfriend, tender shinned, and the wearer of sensible pants."*

Tuca then teases Bertie by saying "*We'll see*." She then hangs up. Speckle then questions if Tuca will be OK. Bertie says yes, she thinks Tuca will be fine-finally able to be herself and not have anyone *"cramp [her] style*."

## Relationships

### Friendships

* Bertie Songthrush
* Speckle

## Trivia

* Tuca is either bi or pansexual, as she is shown interested in and hooking up with numerous men and women, including Deli Guy, the Mechanic Hawk lady (whom was among many men and women birds on Tuca's "reality show", Kara, and Figgy.
	+ She claims in "The Open House" that she has "weird crushes" on lots of people, and in the imagination spot Speckle is among her crushes, although Tuca says she would never act on any of them.

* "The Promotion" reveals Tuca has a habit of watching car crash videos online for hours.
	+ It’s likely this is due to her trauma of losing her mother in a car crash as a child, as a form of a coping mechanism.
* Tuca uses a flip phone in Season One, but by the Season 2 premier she has a smartphone.

* In Bird Mechanics it's revealed she writes her problems on mugs after “spewing” her bad emotions into the,l and then hides them behind the toilet.
* She is thirty-two as of Season Two.
	+ The Season 1 episode "The Jelly Lakes" has her state she and Bertie are both thirty, so about a year and a half or two years have passed both in the show and in real life as there was a two year gap between seasons one and two.
		- Bertie is also now thirty one in Season Two, meaning either Tuca is a year older than her or celebrates her birthday before she does.
* In "The Deli Guy” it’s revealed Tuca doesn’t wear makeup and is self conscious about her big beak and thick thighs.
* Tuca steals Bertie's Wi-Fi.
	+ The password is TuCa\_NO\_PorN.
* Tuca’s cut off jorts ruined Bertie's summer vacation once.
* Tuca got her and Bertie kicked out of someone named Anita's wedding because Tuca insisted the buffet was all-you-can-eat.
* Tuca does not have Speckle's number saved in her phone, claiming their relationship extends beyond technology (it’s also likely she never bothered to add it).