Turtle (Entourage)

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Turtle
Entourage character <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align:center; font-size:smaller">Image:Entourage ep104.jpg</td>
Hometown:	Queens, New York
Known Relatives:
Profession:	Friend of Vincent Chase
Significant Other:	Currently not seeing anyone
Played by:	Jerry Ferrara
Key Episode:	Entourage (Pilot)

Turtle is a character on the dramedy television series Entourage. He is played by Jerry Ferrara.

Turtle, like Eric, 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. 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. 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.

Turtle's real name has not been revealed yet. 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 falling out earlier in 2005 because Carroll claimed Wahlberg never paid him for appropriating his life story for Entourage.^{[citation needed]} He said all the other real-life characters had been taken care of but that he'd been cut out.<ref>"Inspiration for Entourage's 'Turtle' dies of asthma attack" by Kim Voynar, TV Squad, December 21, 2005 retrieved August 24, 2006</ref>