- "Sorry, ignore me. My whole thing is I just crave attention."
- —Cheryl Tunt[src]
Cheryl R. Tunt is a main character, and is formerly Malory Archer's prattling secretary at ISIS before it became The Figgis Agency.
Background
The Tunt Family Portrait
Cheryl and her brother Cecil Tunt are the only two surviving members of the Tunt Family. The Tunts are an extremely wealthy family who are the descendants of the railroad tycoon Cornelius Tunt. Her family at one time lived in what was the Belgian Congo. Cheryl's parents died when their chauffeur had a stroke and crashed their limo into a tree. She didn't go to her parents' funeral because she was afraid Malory Archer would fire her for being late. Her money is locked up in a trust fund. During Season 5, she owns and resided in Tunt Manor with the rest of the cast, a mansion located on the northwestern corner of 5th Avenue and 55th Street in midtown Manhattan, next to the Roosevelt Mansion. (The actual townhome built by the Roosevelt family is located ten blocks north on East 65th Street and is open to the public.) Cheryl and her brother Cecil each inherited five hundred million dollars. This has made Cheryl a target of several kidnappers. She believes that she is 1/64th Cherokee.[1] She also has a pet ocelot named Babou.
Personality
Sexuality
Cheryl enjoys extreme BDSM sexual fetishes, being on the submissive end of the spectrum. She is a full spectrum masochist and gets aroused by simple slaps, and, at her extremes, demands to be choked during sex (erotic asphyxiation) and becomes "wet just thinking about it." (Should Cyril Figgis snap and kill her, she would consider the event the "world's gushiest orgasm"[2]). She often refers to this obsession with being killed as erotic, for instance in Honeypot when she reveals a fantasy about a fireman choking her to death instead of performing CPR. She is also a sadist to the extent that she says she is turned on by physical and emotional violence, directed towards herself and others (as revealed in Legs)[3], but it is unclear whether she likes to inflict pain on others herself. A good example of would be is when she laughs at the gruesome scene of the dead KGB agents killed by Sterling Archer in Fugue and Riffs while everyone else is repulsed.
There is a very good chance that her extreme fetishes stem from childhood sexual abuse, as is heavily implied in Pocket Listing when she said that her grandfather used to use the secret tunnels in Tunt Mansion to "look in on the children." She has expressed bisexual interests, responding amorously to Malory Archer's and Lana Kane's physical abuse (see above), and responding to Pam Poovey carrying her by saying she's "totally digging this whole Queen Kong vibe" (thus reinforcing her submissive side).
Financial Status
Cheryl is 'independently wealthy' being worth $500 million. She displays an absolute disconnect from any sense of money or the value of things. She is not interested in learning about finances, and has all kinds of odd notions about how they work. For instance, she thought insurance with a high deductible was good because, "Don't you deduct it on your taxes or something?" [4] Or when she thought it was good that having chlamydia put her over her deductible, "So the rest of that year all my doctor visits were totally free, score!" (In fact, she said this was the only favor Archer had ever done her).[5] It's obvious that her wealth has insulated her from having to worry about financial matters, so she has no clue why Cyril would be so upset at her over $3700 [6] or Pam over $14,000.[7] In "Jeu Monégasque," when everyone else freaks out that four million dollars are missing from their 401(k) accounts, Cheryl, who has already figured out where that money went, says "Is that a lot?" Other people have apparently been managing her money for her, as well, and she seems unsure about what she owns at times.[8] All this makes more sense of the fact that the trust and the family business is predominantly managed by her brother. Cheryl is not completely devoid from participating in the management of the family business, she is depicted in "Archer Vice: Baby Shower" explicitly expressing her distaste of a glass pool outside the presidential suite at the illustrious "Tuntmoore Towers" hotel in New York. Cheryl's lack of computer savvy is shown as she attempts to turn on her computer by typing the letters "O" and "N" on her keyboard,[9] and search for an online pregnancy test.
Dislikes
- Babies: Cheryl voices an extreme dislike of babies, labeling them as "germ factories", and saying that all babies should be drowned, though after she says this she corrects herself and says, "Not all babies, just baby people." She wanted to be pregnant with Conway Stern's baby in Season 1, however, this may have been an attempt to fulfill a fantasy of abandoning a baby at a mall, or just not having her hatred for babies be developed into her character yet.[10] She was grossed out whenever the subject of Lana's pregnancy is brought up, and was uncomfortable and very reluctant about assisting Archer with helping Lana when she was in labor in San Marcos. She starts cleaning obsessively when in proximity of one [7] [8].
- Midgets/Deformities: She has a dislike and/or is fearful of midgets as she is disgusted by people with deformities and handicaps. For instance she walked to work to avoid riding the train with a little person (to whom she referred to as a "train dwarf" [ 6] ). Also, when Archer lost his hearing [ 15 and Ray the use of his legs[ 16] she screamed at them to "move along." One possible exception, apparently, would be people with hooks for hands.[ 15]
Mental Stability
Cheryl has gone through multiple personality changes throughout the series, with her mental stability appearing to deteriorate as the show progresses. Originally depicted as airheaded, conniving, manipulative and deceitful, she was rewritten into a more easy-going yet intellectually-lacking character in season 2. In season 3 her intellect continues to degrade into a more childlike state, and has become less concerned with the well-being of her co-workers. In season 4 her behavior took a turn for the further unusual, displaying instances of unconscious mind-reading as well as breaking the fourth wall. In Season 5, she has a psychotic break from reality and becomes Cherlene. In Season 6/7/8/9 [TBA]
- Huffing/ingesting rubber cement/glue: Beginning in the second season, she is shown to have a glue habit. Once established, the habit is shown much less as the series progresses, but the degree of her severe mental illness is further developed. She appears to have some kind of withdrawal when she uses all of the cement in the office (for instance feeling ants all over her), but using it has a calming effect on her.[citation needed]
- Pyromaniac/arsonist: She enjoys watching things burn, including buildings. As a child, Cheryl doused a gazebo in the yard of one of the family mansions with gasoline and set it on fire much to the horror of Cecil [11], and has mentioned more than once wanting to burn down the ISIS building. She seems to be turned on as well as fascinated by fire. On several occasions she has set fires in order to meet people, like firemen.[12]
- Extreme delusions/hallucinations: She suffers a variety of delusions, one of which Archer and Pam mention was that for a while she thought she was a werewolf and made the rest of the team lock her in the ISIS vault every full moon.[13] It's implied that she has visual hallucinations. The most severe example of her mental illness is her Dissociative Identity Disorder during her time as Cherlene, a separate personality that emerged during Season 5, who claimed that Cheryl was gone. Once Season 5 ends, Cheryl comes back with absolutely no memory of Cherlene or ever being Cherlene.
- Violent tendencies: She reveals that she severed the tendon of her crush Dick Sledge in her college with scissors[14], and when she stabbed Ray in the leg (with no effect due to his cybernetics).
- Institutionalized: She became skilled in macrame when there were no sharp objects allowed on the ward[14].
- Lacks a filter: She says the first thing on her mind.
- Craves attention - Cheryl mentioned in Skin Game
Cheryl psychotic behaviour is used as a device for breaking the fourth wall. Although plenty of other characters look to camera and appear to address the audience, she is the only character on the show to ever hear the show's dramatic music (which is intended solely for the audience). She only does this in "Sea Tunt: Part I", an episode devoted to her brother Cecil Tunt’s attempt to claim her half of their inheritance by acquiring damning evidence of her mental instability and therefore unsuitability.
In short, Cheryl has a host of psychiatric problems and is a possible danger to herself and others. But, she is adorable in her own messed up way.
Employment at ISIS
In her role as Malory's personal assistant, Cheryl screens Malory's phone calls and visitors. She also takes care of whatever Malory needs at the moment, such as cleaning up after her fits of destructive rage, also fetching and opening her Cobb salads. Despite complaining about how much she hates her job, it is unknown why she in fact works at ISIS, as she clearly does not need to. It may be as a consequence of boredom that she is paradoxically dedicated to it. Prior to the revelation in El Secuestro (s2e10) that Cheryl is in fact a Tunt (Tum again?), she had been using the pseudonym Gimple. That she was employed under a pseudonym is indicative of a desire to hide her true identity (such as from potential kidnappers) but also, perhaps, to live a 'normal' life - or at least one marginally less weird than she is used to.
During the Heart of Archness trilogy, she often stayed in the office all night to await important phone calls on Malory's orders. In "Fugue and Riffs," she describes the hatred toward her co-workers as the only thing that gets her out of bed in the morning.
As Country Singer "Cherlene"
During Season 5, Cheryl takes on a new career as a country singer. In "House Call", a "mind control microchip," is implanted in her brain by Krieger to relieve her of performance anxiety. Following this, Cheryl adopts the new alias of Cherlene. While she retains traces of her ditziness, she also becomes more confident, outspoken, vain (occasionally referring to herself in the third person), and a brazen hillbilly starlet. However, Krieger ultimately reveals the "microchip" was just a sticker, and she subsequently abandons her Cherlene personality. In following episodes in the sixth season, Cheryl seemingly has no memory of her time as Cherlene whatsoever.
In Southbound and Down, Cherlene says that she doesn't fly, but she has no qualms to stowaway on an airplane with Pam Poovey in Palace Intrigue, Part I.
When Cherlene performs country music songs, she is voiced by Jessy Lynn Martens.
As Femme Fatale Charlotte Vandertunt
During Season 8, Archer, who is in a comatose state, envisions himself and all his friends, relations, and associates as characters in film noir-esque setting. Cheryl takes on the dream persona Charlotte Vandertunt, a mysterious woman who seeks out private investigator Sterling Archer's help.
Charlotte shares many similar characteristics with Cheryl including her appearance, status as a wealthy heiress, distrust of her family, shortsightedness, naiveté, excitability, elitist tendencies, and fondness for violence and drugs, in this case codeine and dexedrine. In one notable difference her between Cheryl, Charlotte seems slightly more compassionate: while she does plan to use Berenice as a double for herself so that she can fake her own death, she nonetheless voices concern for the poor woman's dignity, which is ironic given that she has been oblivious to it up until then, grossly abusing her corpse by transporting it around in her trunk.
For much more detail, see her bespoke page here.
As New York Socialite Charlotte Stratton
During Season 9, Archer, who is still in a comatose state, envisions himself and all his friends, relations, and associates as characters in a South Pacific Island setting. In Strange Pilot (s9e1), Cheryl takes on the dream persona Charlotte Stratton, a New York Socialite who has "no money, no job, no skills and no prospects". Recently married to Whitney Stratton IV, she regretfully sleeps with Archer on the first night of her honeymoon. She maintains some kinkiness to her character as she indulges in some drunken eyehole licking. Her maiden name is Vandertunt, thus she is the identical persona as the one featured in the previous season.
For much more detail see her bespoke page here.
Quotes
- "Duuuhhh!" (multiple)
- "Mind if I glue up?"
- "Ow, my ear-balls!" (multiple)
- "You're not my supervisor!" (multiple)
- "Jeez-owww! ...Ya got another one in ya?" (after being slapped by Sterling Archer)
- "Just like the old gypsy woman said!" (multiple)
- "Take me with you!" (multiple)
- "Ugh! Now nobody's picking up! A monkey could do this stupid job!"
- "Please! If you really cared, you'd resign, but there's no way you ever will because you're just counting days until, her face bloated and yellow from liver failure, she calls you to her deathbed and, in a croaky whisper, explains that Mr. Archer is totally incompetent and that you, the long-suffering Lana Kane, are the only one qualified to run ISIS and you weep shameful tears because this terrible place is the only true love you will ever know."
- "Oh my God, this is so boring and forever-taking!"
- "Like, a big sweaty fireman carries you out of a burning building, lays you on the sidewalk, and you think, "Yeah, okay, he's gonna give me mouth to mouth." But instead, he just starts choking the shit out of you, and the last sensation that you feel before you die as he is squeezing your throat so hard that a big, wet, blob of drool drips off his teeth and just, "flurp", falls right onto your popped out eyeball..."
- "Where are we, Six Flags Over the Shittier Parts of Chernobyl?"
- "Jesus!"
- "Ew and/or ick!"
- Agent Hawley: "After the air strike on the palace, you won't be able to swing a dead cat in the air without hitting a Marine."
- Cheryl: "Plus, if you did, I bet they'd smash your teeth down your stupid throat."
As Cherlene
- "I'm Cherlene now. And if somebody don't fry me six goddamn eggs and some Carolina fries, I would personally be shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, if by mornin' this place ain't burned to the ground!"
- "Whoooo! Outlaw country!" (multiple)
- "Duhhhh! We were shooting my album cover!"
- "Hey, Tree Beard! Take me with you! You can do unspeakable things to and/or on me!"
- "Ugggggh! Fix it! I will be in my tour bus, putting whiskey and glue inside of me."
- "Yeah, Stupid! Your words."
Trivia
- The Tunts appear to have been based on the Vanderbilts.
- Cheryl's home seems to resemble the Biltmore (The Tuntmore). The pool being the most obvious.
- Her father, George Washington Tunt, seems to resemble George Washington Vanderbilt.
- Both the Tunts and Vanderbilts made their fortune in railroads.
- Cornelius Tunt resembles wikipedia:Cornelius Vanderbilt.
- Cheryl's name during the events of Season 8 is "Vandertunt."
- Cheryl speaks some Russian.[15]
- She has gone by the names Carol, Cherlene,[4] Cristal,[1] and Carina.[16] Initially, she started going by Carol because Archer mistakenly calls her that. Later, after her frequent name changes, she said that she did not know what her name was when being asked. In a possible coincidence, feminist rhetorician Cheryl Glenn was mistakenly called Carol so often by Edward P. J. Corbett that she, too, sometimes adopted the nickname.
- She is a pyromaniac, repeatedly threatening, planning, and sometimes trying, to burn ISIS headquarters to the ground.
- She has been institutionalized in a mental hospital, at least once as a result of an incident in college, as explained in "Movie Star." She was stalking a quarterback named Dick Sledge in her sophomore year (who had been ignoring her). She had gone so far as to break her own arm and ask him to sign her cast as a conversation starter (he wouldn't do it). She broke into his apartment to find out what he liked and "roll around in his clothes," but he came home and surprised her. She then stabbed his throwing hand with a pair of scissors, severing his tendon and ending his football career. Because of this incident she is now familiar with police procedures regarding mentally ill suspects and has used this to her advantage. This also explains the origin of her catchphrase "You're not my supervisor!", which she yells at the top of her voice when someone asks something of her.
- Her ocelot is named Babou after Salvador Dalí's ocelot.
- Tunt also rhymes with cunt, which is reinforced by all the given names she's used beginning with the letter 'C.' This also adds another layer to the title of the Season 4 finale episodes "Sea Tunt: Part I" and "Sea Tunt: Part II" (themselves a reference to the 1960s television show Sea Hunt). Archer finds this hilarious and is surprised when no one else reacts to the reference, as he often says, "Tum, again?"[6] Throughout the series there will be callbacks to this, for instance in "The Limited" where the engineer exclaims, "Those crazy Tunts!"
- She claims not to know what cancer is.[17][18]
- She likewise did not know what chocolate mousse was. As she and Pam Poovey eat it together, Pam refers to it as mousse. This disgusts Cheryl initially because she believes Pam is telling her that what they are eating contains moose; she spits it out. She also spits out the mousse when she mistakenly believes Pam has told her it contains nuts, to which Pam must remind her she is not allergic.
- She overuses the word 'Duh', sometimes even when she doesn't actually know what she is referring to. She openly admits she doesn't know why she says it so much and thinks she needs help.[18]
- She is in a corn-hole league.[17]
- She is lactose intolerant[19] and allergic to penicillin.[20]
- She has $50,390 in her ISIS 401(k) under the name Cheryl Gimple.[21]
- She is a descendant of Cornelius Tunt and George Washington Tunt. Cornelius Tunt is a reference to Cornelius Vanderbilt, also a railroad magnate and patriarch of the extremely wealthy Vanderbilt family. George Washington Vanderbilt was a descendant of the Cornelius Vanderbilt.
- She regularly eats LSD-infused gummy bears, appropriately named "Groovy Bears," until a mandatory drug test threatens her job security, although she resumes eating them in season 4. She starts doing this after finding out (in A Going Concern) that Doctor Krieger has been dosing her with LSD by tricking her with LSD-infused breath strips.[22] Apparently she enjoyed the LSD, given her later obsession with and extreme consumption of the "Groovy bears." In "Fugue and Riffs" she freaks out when this results in a hallucination involving an ostrich, screaming and dropping the bears then running away.
- She is skilled in macramé, a talent she honed during her stay in a mental institution, as "they were super strict about not having sharp objects on the ward." [14]
- Archer has repeatedly infected her with chlamydia.[5]
- When she hears background music in Sea Tunt this is a way for the writers to reinforce her pyschopathology/ mental unwellness, which is the subtext of Cecil's interrogations onboard the Sea Tunt.
- In every episode of Archer VICE after House Call, Cherlene is seen shouting out "Outlaw Country!"
- In the first episode of Archer Vice, during questioning by the FBI, she mentions 'faking her own kidnapping' implying the kidnappers from an earlier season were hired by her.
- As Cherlene, her outfit changes. She wears her hair down, mostly cut off shorts, a plaid top that shows off her midriff and cowboy boots.
- She was briefly married to Gustavo Calderon, but they never consummated their marriage.
- In Bloody Ferlin, it’s hinted that she always wanted to get married when Archer tells her she and Ray Gillette are married (but it wasn't real marriage) and was excited and happy, as well as in an extra clip ("Media Day with Cheryl Tunt"), when she's asked what her idea of a perfect day is, she dreamily responds, "My wedding day," before breaking down into tears, and eventually pulling herself together and repeating the statement.
- She is affectionately referred to as "Beans" by Cecil Tunt.
- Although it may not be true since it was in Archer's coma dream, Cheryl offhandedly implies that her mother was domestically abused, when Dr. Algernop Krieger tries to explain away his facial injuries from saying that he walking into a door repeatedly, she sighs and says her mother used to do that a lot.
- Siobhan Price served as the model for Cheryl.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Diversity Hire
- ↑ Skytanic
- ↑ Legs
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Training Day
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Midnight Ron
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 El Secuestro
- ↑ Live and Let Dine
- ↑ Fugue and Riffs
- ↑ Job Offer
- ↑ Blood Test
- ↑ Sea Tunt: Part I
- ↑ Viscous Coupling
- ↑ Sea Tunt: Part I
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Movie Star
- ↑ Vision Quest
- ↑ Killing Utne
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Stage Two
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Placebo Effect
- ↑ Mole Hunt
- ↑ The Honeymooners
- ↑ Jeu Monégasque
- ↑ A Going Concern
Gallery of Images
There are 138 images of Cheryl Tunt on this Wiki, visit the Cheryl Tunt gallery to view all the images and screenshots. Here is a sample of four images from the gallery:
