Last night, the Showtime series Ray Donovan made its return to the small screen — which means that all across the land, real people named Ray Donovan went to work today and had to endure dumb jokes about being on TV. In honor of their struggle, Vulture reached out to over 50 men named Ray Donovan to understand how they felt about the show; three brave Ray Donovans responded. Here is what they had to say.
“A few jokes have been made about it alright, from as far away as people in Brazil,†said the first Ray Donovan, who runs his own personal-training program in Portugal. He hasn’t ever seen the show (“for good shows I wait for the box sets,†he told me), but he appreciates the notoriety that his name has taken on as a result. “The only impact it has had on my life has been that I’m well hidden in Google searches,†he said, “and I’m pretty happy about that.â€
Ray Donovan the Second hails from England, where he illegally watches the show on the internet. He said he’s a fan of the show’s star, Liev Schreiber, and his “calm, no-nonsense demeanor.†Donovan II loved the scene in the show’s first season when the fictional Ray Donovan offered a stalker the choice of a baseball-bat beating or a bath in green dye, the quintessential American dilemma. “It’s made no impact on my life,†the British Donovan said, “except I now tend to say ‘I’m Ray fucking Donovan’ an awful lot.â€
The third Ray Donovan was much more knowledgeable about the show than the others. It turns out that he’s such a superfan of the show that he changed his Facebook name (from CJ Moebius, which also sounds a little made-up, TBH) because he feels like “he’s my alter ego and because I have a few crazy ex-girlfriends [too].†This dubious Donovan actually serves as the president and co-founder of Grassp, what he called the “Uber of marijuana delivery here in Los Angeles.†He told me that family and friends frequently let him know that he looks like Schrieber (his Facebook profile photo backed that story up), so he decided to take his fandom to the next step.
“The show has undoubtedly made my life better,†he said. “If my legal name was indeed Ray Donovan, I would feel like a motherfucking  bad-ass, hence, me living through Ray Donovan as an alter-ego Facebook alias.â€