Turtle (Entourage)

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Entourage character
Turtle
Hometown: Queens, New York
Age: mid-20s, birthday August 6th
Known Relatives:
Profession: Friend of Vincent Chase
Significant Other: Kelly (no longer dating)
Played by: Jerry Ferrara
Key Episode: Entourage (Pilot)

Turtle is a character on the dramedy television series Entourage. He is played by Jerry Ferrara. He is the only one of the main characters who is not directly involved with the acting business.

Contents

[edit] Fictional biography

Turtle is a childhood friend of Vince's from Queens. Turtle is Vincent's driver and takes care of issues around the house. He brings street smarts and an urban flavor to the group and is a frequent user of marijuana and supplier to the rest of the group. In most episodes, he and Drama stick together and do their own things while E and Vincent are doing business. Turtle seems to be the guy to find the good in all bad situations and bring a relative calm to the group. Turtle's importance is at times overlooked as his insight and personal connections sometimes solve difficult issues. He is mainly seen wearing jerseys of athletes such as Allan Houston and Alex Rodriguez, and an omnipresent baseball cap, usually the New York Yankees. Despite his parasitic relationship with Vince, his loyalty and friendship temper his baser qualities, like working with Eric to protect Vince from a vindictive internet journalist.

In season two, Eric's car is stolen by two friends as a means of getting their rap demo tape into the hands of a music producer who has the exact same car. Loving the music, Turtle gets a track into Queens Boulevard and agrees to manage the promising musician played by real life rapper Saigon. He doesn't get a formal office until season four in Eric Murphy's "The Murphy Group" corporation. Saigon received a great deal of interest from several record companies after Vince arranged for Saigon's music to be played by Big Boy on popular L.A. radio station, Power 106. After Turtle obtained representation for Saigon from Ari, Turtle lost his client when Saigon informed him that a former manager had returned and muscled Turtle out of the picture. Despite his troubles with Saigon, Turtle received a moderate settlement of $40,000 from Saigon. His activities after this episode in terms of producing considerably disappear. Turtle is friends with Kanye West.

At the end of Season 3, Turtle is dating Kelly, the daughter of a body shop manager. In Season 4, Turtle invests $20,000 in his Cousin Ronnie's scheme to buy a dying Sandy Koufax's jersey, hoping that he will profit after the Koufax dies. However, Turtle learns by the auctioneers that Koufax is actually alive and well, thereby squandering the rest of Turtle's Saigon money and a large sum of Drama's money.

In Aquamom, Turtle's mother asked, "Who's that animal," in reference to the dates that he and Drama were planning to take to the premiere. However, because of the crowd noise some mistake his mother as saying "Adam" instead of "animal," thus believing that Turtle's real name is Adam. Neither his full name nor the reason why he's referred to as 'Turtle' has been revealed yet. However, according to the pilot script, Turtle's full name is Ian Lang. In Episode #2.11 Blue Balls Lagoon, it is revealed that Turtle is Sicilian-American.

In the DVD commentary of season 3 parts 1&2, Doug Ellin and Jerry Ferrera discuss that Turtle will get a name in Season 7, if the show makes it to that point.

[edit] Inspiration

The Turtle character was based on Mark Wahlberg's real-life assistant, 39-year-old Donnie "Donkey" Carroll. Donkey carried Wahlberg's bags for more than 14 years while trying to launch a career as a rap musician under the name Murda One.[citation needed] Donkey died suddenly on December 18, 2005 of an asthma attack. Donkey and Wahlberg had a dispute earlier in 2005 because Carroll claimed Wahlberg never paid him for appropriating his life story for Entourage. He said all the other real-life characters had been taken care of but that he'd been cut out.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Inspiration for Entourage's 'Turtle' dies of asthma attack" by Kim Voynar, TV Squad, December 21, 2005 retrieved August 24, 2006

[edit] External links

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