The list of United States of Tara characters centers on the Gregson family. The series follows the family as it deals with Tara Gregson and her struggles with dissociative identity disorder. Her family, including husband Max, children Kate and Marshall, and sister Charmaine, serve as her support system. Secondary characters include love interests, neighbors, friends, and Tara's therapists. Tara's "alters", or alternate personalities, stand as characters in their own rights and continually interact with the other characters and sometimes with each other and Tara.
Main characters Tara Gregson Tara Gregson, née Craine, (Toni Collette) is the central character of the series. She is an extremely talented woman who would like to nurture her growth as an artist, but can't for balancing everything else in her life, including her job as a mural painter, her husband and two teenage children, and her dissociative identity disorder. Tara is the system's 'host' personality, and her natural personality is somewhat of a mixture of all her alters. By the beginning of season two she is able to become aware of her alters (co-consciousness) and communicate with them while still being conscious. The series begins shortly after she made the decision to stop taking her medication, which allows her underlying vulnerabilities (her alters) to re-emerge. In the time leap of three months between seasons one and two, she begins taking her medication again, and it works for a while. In the final episode of season three Tara takes drastic measures and throws herself off a bridge, but survives and manages to kill her "abuser" alter. Diablo Cody, the show's creator, has stated that Tara isn't being irresponsible by not taking the medication, but rather "wants a chance to try living with her condition, instead of smothering it with drugs" because it is "clear ... that she is not receiving proper treatment for her dissociative identity disorder". Tara's "therapist" alter is shown promoting this view to a student class, before her professor intervenes. Collette has said that she is "excited" and "absolutely in love" with the project.
Max Gregson Max Gregson (John Corbett), Tara's husband, is a nurturing man who unconditionally supports Tara and attempts to resolve conflicts and support her. He acts as caretaker to both of his children and, despite the challenges and frustrations, Max is a committed husband and father. The New Yorker called him "a member of that strange breed of TV husband that exhibits infinite patience". Max's own father left him and his mother during his childhood due to her mental illness which may motivate his fierce commitment to his family and to supporting his wife through. Throughout season two, Tara thinks that the only reason they are still together is because he views her as a "project". He is very close to both of his children, Marshall and Kate. He ran a landscaping business for the first two seasons until selling it to a competitor, for which he goes to work, in season three. Max had a one-night stand with Pammy in her bar. He has an extreme fear of flying, as shown in the season 3 episode, "Chicken 'n' Corn".
Kate Gregson Kate Gregson (Brie Larson) is Tara's and Max's troubled teenage daughter. She is self-indulgent, often cruel, very naive, sexually promiscuous, and selfish. She considers herself wise about the world and constantly tries to educate Marshall, the family member with whom she has the closest relationship. In the pilot episode, Tara transitions into teenage alter-ego T when she finds a prescription for the morning-after pill in Kate's backpack. Kate is also shown to have a boyfriend named Benjamin, but their relationship quickly ends after Tara sees him shove her. Early on in the first season, Kate takes a job at a chain family restaurant. She briefly enters into a casual relationship with her manager, Gene, but grows uncomfortable with his advances and initiates a sexual harassment complaint against him. At the beginning of the second season, it is revealed that Kate received her high school diploma early by taking the GED. She then works at a debt collection agency. In her free time she smoked marijuana with Marshall and made super heroine videos with her friend Lynda. She briefly did internet peep shows as Princess Valhalla Hawkwind in exchange for gifts on her online gift registry. She soon stopped, when she met a man named Zac (over the internet in a webcam chat), and started dating him, but she broke things off near the end of season 2. She is eager to leave town and find a new, alters-free life elsewhere yet she is ultimately unable to abandon her mother in her unending personal crisis. In season 3, she plans to teach English in Japan but abruptly changes career goals, taking a job as an airline stewardess instead. Through her job, she meets and starts a serious relationship with a man named Evan. During the series finale, Kate tells Evan she wants to move with him to St. Louis, but not until her mother finishes her treatment.
Marshall Gregson Marshall Gregson (Keir Gilchrist) is Tara's and Max's son, and the "baby" of the family. He is old-fashioned, loves classic films, and wants to be a director when he grows up. Creator Diablo Cody has addressed Marshall's being gay as "just matter-of-fact" and "definitely wasn't intended as any sort of plot point". Though the family is supportive of Marshall, Buck is slightly homophobic and often makes disparaging remarks; Cody thought "it would be really fun" to have the dichotomy of Tara being "incredibly supportive" while Buck is "kind of a homophobe", though "he actually does love Marshall". Marshall is extremely sensitive, loyal, and kind, but is also vindictive if pushed over the edge. In the tenth episode of season one, he sets the shed on fire, following T's indiscretion with Jason in the shed. Tara's pet name for Marshall is "Marshmallow," while Kate endearingly calls him "Moosh." He crushes on Jason, an older boy at his school. The two kiss but after an incident with T, Marshall ends things with Jason. He then begins to date a girl, Courtney. However, after having sex with her, Marshall comes to realize he is gay. Marshall gets a boyfriend in season 2, Lionel, his openly gay best friend and first official boyfriend. In season 3 Marshall and Lionel break up and Marshall begins a relationship with Noah, a new classmate. After Lionel is killed in a car accident, Marshall acts openly hostile towards his family, especially his mother, but is eventually able to find closure by visiting the site of Lionel's accident. Gilchrist has been praised for his portrayal, and singled out as "the real breakout star ... [his] expressive, trusting face will definitely break your heart in some scenes".
Charmaine Craine Charmaine Craine (Rosemarie DeWitt) is Tara's self-absorbed younger sister. At the beginning of the show she resents Tara for always being the center of attention and accuses her of faking her disorder. As the show goes on it is shown that she truly wants to hate Tara for always getting what she wants, but can't due to Tara always looking out for her and being the only person who doesn't get annoyed by her next to Neil. Cody wrote Charmaine as an antagonist because she wanted "a voice for the skeptics". She worked for a mail-order vitamin company before an incident involving one of Tara's alters caused her to lose her job. Her first husband pressured her into getting breast augmentation surgery, which resulted in deformed, lopsided breasts. She undergoes corrective surgery, and starts to bond with Buck, who takes care of her while she recovers, after Tara transitions because she cannot cope. In the season 2 premiere she gets engaged to Nick. She also finds out she's pregnant and discovers the baby is Neil's. Neil is a short chubby ex-boyfriend and a friend of Max's, and Charmaine admits to Tara that she is still attracted to him, while also in love with her tall, fit, handsome fiancé, Nick, who subsequently leaves her at the altar. At the end of season 2, Tara and Charmaine begin to understand that Charmaine's ignorance of the abuses she and Tara suffered as children is a result of Tara's protection of her sister, which is linked to the formation of her earliest and youngest alters. In the season 3 episode "Wheels", Charmaine gives birth to her daughter, whom Neil names Cassandra "Wheels" Kowalski. Like Tara, Charmaine also suffered trauma due to their childhood. Though it isn't shown as the series goes on, it is clear that she suffers from being a chronic liar, has a hard time being empathetic and sympathetic, and is boldly selfish. In Season 3, Charmaine tells Tara that she is off limits to her baby after T threatened Charmaine with a near-miss car hit in a parking lot, causing Charmaine's water to break. Charmaine later allows alter Alice to help take care of the baby (and Alice proves to be superb in her assistance). She is horrified when what turns out to be Tara's worst, most evil alter (Bryce) kidnaps Wheels, but Tara brings her back safely. At the end of the series, Charmaine decides to move to Texas with Neil for his new job so that way they can be a family; she also asks Neil to marry her.
The alters Toni Collette plays all of Tara's alternate personalities, referred to as "alters". Whenever Tara is stressed or has strong emotions she cannot handle, she uncontrollably transitions. As the series began Tara suffers from dissociative amnesia and generally had no memories of what her alters did, but as it progressed Tara began becoming more aware of the alters and was able to feel them inside her and eventually communicate with them. On several occasions the alters were depicted talking to one another and in one instance all of the then-known alters attended a summit meeting of sorts, drawing up a "contract" for when each alter was allowed control of the body. As of the series premiere Tara was aware of three alters, Alice, Buck and T. By the end of the second season three additional personalities had been discovered, Gimme, Chicken, and Shoshana Schoenbaum. By the middle of the third season a seventh, violent alter emerged, Bryce. Bryce subsequently "killed" all of the other alters, leaving just him and Tara. However, Alice, T and Buck reappeared in the series finale, showing that they survived.
Alice