The Golden Girls/Characters

Main Characters

Dorothy Zbornak, née Petrillo (Bea Arthur)

A substitute teacher from Brooklyn, New York who is very well-read with a rapier wit, but prone to arrogance and being a Deadpan Snarker; even so, Dorothy tends to be the most grounded of the four titular girls.

• Bookworm: A frequenter at the local library who always turns her books in on time... who are you to judge her?
• Butt Monkey: Tends to have the worst luck when it comes to her personal life.
• Brainy Brunette: As seen in flashbacks.
• Break the Haughty: Whenever she begins to think too highly of herself, Blanche, Sophia, or just life step in to take her down.
• Catch Phrase: "Shady Pines, Ma!"
• Compressed Vice: Dorothy has grappled with both cigarette smoking and a gambling addiction.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The final two episodes of the series were about Dorothy finally finding true love with Blanche's uncle, Lucas Hollingsworth, and marrying him.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "Moose", according to her mother.
• Hollywood Dateless
• Hollywood Homely
• Insufferable Genius: At her worst.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Is sometimes mistaken for a man due to her voice. Many of Blanche and Sophia's insults are in this vein.
• Only Sane Man
  • Not So Above It All: She's got her moments when her roommates have had to bring her back to common sense.
• Shotgun Wedding: The only reason for her failed first marriage.
• Tall, Dark and Snarky
• Tsundere: She and an undercover cop who lives with them in one episode have a Slap Slap Kiss dynamic.
• The Unfavorite: Sophia favored her younger sister Gloria over her; however, the true unfavorite of the three Petrillo children is... Phil.
• Unstoppable Rage: Alluded at. She apparently once made a policeman cry, and in Rose's words, "uprooted a mighty sequoia" after Rose lost her keys.

Blanche Devereaux, née Hollingsworth (Rue McClanahan)

A native of Georgia who owns the house the girls all live in. A distinctly Southern Casanova who scoffs at the idea that a woman can't have a sex life after 50 (or 40, or however old she says she is that day).

• Alpha Bitch: Seems to have been this when she was a child if her stories are accurate.
• Casanova/TheCharmer: No man over 45 (and some men under, too!) can resist the allure of Blanche Devereaux.
• Daddy's Girl: Without a doubt, Blanche loved both her parents, but especially "Big Daddy".
• Dirty Old Woman: To the point that even Maxim felt obliged to acknowledge her as # 1 of "TV's Best Nymphos."
• Distracted by the Sexy: Blanche occasionally distracts herself by describing an erotic scene.
• Ethical Slut: She loves sex, but she refuses to be a mistress and after an AIDS scare she always knows her partner's history and takes all the necessary precautions.
• Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: Although she sometimes makes her grandkids call her "Mom" or "Sis".
• It's All About Me: By way of Flanderization, Blanche became more self-absorbed as the series went on.
• Large Ham: Blanche is prone to overdramatizing everything in a way that would make Ms. O'Hara herself sigh, "Bitch, please".
• Meaningful Name: If Blanche Devereaux, the vain, man-hungry, aging Southern Belle isn't a reference to Blanche DuBois, the vain, man-hungry, aging Southern Belle from A Streetcar Named Desire, I'll eat their wicker couch.
  • She also has Meaningful Initials. Blanche Elisabeth Devereaux. Think about it.
• Parental Neglect: Blanche was a very "hands-off" mother, which factors into any episode that features her children and grandchildren. She tries to reverse this tendency with one of her granddaughters, but ends up forcing her into a beauty contest she clearly doesn't want to be in. A very rare example of Parents as People from the perspective of the "bad" parent.
• Really Gets Around
• Retcon: "Hollingsworth" is her last name in the pilot, afterwards said to be her maiden name.
• Southern Belle
• Spoiled Brat: When she was a child.
• Vague Age: Invoked--Blanche likes to claim she is in her early forties, and even younger if she thinks she can get away with it. Her real age is a secret--when Doroty and Rose get a copy of her birth certificate, they find that her date of birth has been withheld by order of the governor.
  • Blanche goes through menopause in the second season premiere, which means she could be anywhere from her late forties to early fifties at the start of the show.

Rose Nylund, née Lindstrum (Betty White)

A simple farmgirl from the fictional St. Olaf, Minnesota, Rose moved to Miami to start over after the death of her husband. She has a tendency to be slow on the uptake and has a more cheery disposition than the others, but that doesn't keep her from getting a good snark in.

• Beware the Nice Ones: She can be a pretty big bitch if she wants.
• Catch Phrase: "Back in St. Olaf..."
• Compressed Vice: Is suddenly revealed in one episode to have been addicted to pain killers for 15 years, goes through rehab, and flat-out states that it will be a lifelong problem for her... only for it never to be mentioned again.
  • Because due to a Time Skip she went to a drug detox center in order to handle her addiction with help from professionals.
• Cloudcuckoolander
• Country Mouse
• Dumb Blonde: Although many characters comment on how her hair is obviously dyed, she insists it's natural.
• Dumb Is Good: Is consistently the kindest and most innocent of the four.
• The Ditz: On her good days. However...
• Ethical Slut: She admitted that she had 56 boyfriends when she was a teenager, and she would've had more if she was allowed to date before she became a senior, and she did not go all the way with any of them.
• Genius Ditz: She is very knowledgeable in psychology.
• Genki Girl
• Friend to All Living Things: It goes with the territory when one spends their entire childhood on a farm.
• Happily Adopted: She does not even mention she was adopted until more than halfway into the series. Rose provides a rare glimpse at adoption from the viewpoint of an older character.
• Literal-Minded: Oftentimes she takes a turn of phrase literally. Also she sometimes Does Not Understand Sarcasm.
• Man Child: She plays shadow puppets in her room, still likes to play hide-and-seek, and some episodes show her having a strong attachment to teddy bears. In one episode, she and the girl scout troop she leads write letters to former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and her writing is so childish that they assume that Rose is one of the scouts!
• Nice Girl
• Noodle Incident: Rose is chock full of these pertaining to her hometown St. Olaf.
• Spirited Competitor: Any kind of competition is Serious Business to her and serves as her Berserk Button.

Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty)

Dorothy's acerbic mother, who immigrated from Sicily to Brooklyn as a young woman. She suffered a debilitating stroke a few years before the series started. Dorothy (happily) placed her in the Shady Pines nursing home for a few years, but it burned down in the first episode, leading to Sophia moving in with the girls.

• Arranged Marriage: Had two (or three; sometimes she speaks of her marriage to Dorthy's father as one).
• Ascended Extra: Was conceived as a recurring Drop-In Character, but audiences responded very positively to her, causing her to be added to the main cast.
• Brutal Honesty
• Butt Monkey: The whole world is her Butt Monkey.
• Catch Phrase: "Picture it: Sicily..."
• Characterization Marches On: Her acerbic nature is attributed to her stroke (said to have altered the part of her brain that helps her censor her thoughts), but later on, she seems to have always been a spitfire.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Occasionally, by way of old-lady nuttiness. When Dorothy questions a story about pepperoni swimming upstream, her response is "I know! Pepperoni is a land meat, but there it was."
• Cool Old Lady: Sophia definitely keeps up with the times, even owning a Game Boy.
• Deadpan Snarker: This is who Dorothy gets it from.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Sophia describes herself as having been "a voluptuous blonde with a butt like granite".
• Mama Bear: Age be damned, you'd better not threaten her kids.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Is one to her son Phil's wife Angela--even after his death, she struggles to treat her with even a modicum of respect .
• Only One Name: A variation--we know her married names, but her maiden name is a mystery, especially considering those of the other three were revealed. Sometimes it's listed as either Angelo or Grisanti, but both are rooted in Fanon.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: One of the most iconic examples.
• Unreliable Narrator: An in-universe example. The show is notorious for being inconsistent in its backstory, but Sophia's "Picture it..." stories tend to range from "probably embellished anecdote" to "probably-senile nonsense". Even her appearance tends to change from story to story: she usually describes herself as either redheaded or blonde, and occasionally references being much taller and having a more olive complexion.