Donna Martin - Ray Pruit

Ray Pruit

Jamie Walters portrays Ray Pruit (Seasons 5–6, guest appearance in Season 7), a talented musician with a violent temper whom Donna met while she was doing interviews for CUTV. She was dating Griffin at the time but quickly fell for Ray's charm and talent and dumped Griffin for Ray on Halloween. Ray's background—his mother was an alcoholic and his absent father used to abuse her and Ray, leaving them poor when they fled him—led Donna's mother to distrust him and try to break them up. Later on, Ray became increasingly violent towards Donna, culminating with two ugly incidents when he pushed her against a wall in Oregon and knocked her down a flight of stairs in Palm Springs. Donna forgave/overlooked this violence, but broke up with him when she learned he cheated on her with Valerie, and Ray nearly attacked her again before Joe Bradley defended her. Ray then filed charges against Joe, but some straight truth from Joe led Ray to both admit on the stand he was trying to hurt her (and having Joe's charges dismissed) and to apologize to Donna before leaving L.A. to try out his music. Ray returned late in Season 6 when the video company Donna and David were working for assigned them to do his video; Donna was terrified of him, but soon met his new fiance and learned he was in therapy to deal with his anger issues, and they parted on friendly terms. Ray made one appearance in Season 7, called in by the friends when David had a breakdown in Las Vegas, and was critical of them for not stepping in and helping him during his downward spiral.