In a sit-down a year after the release of Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, Drake Bell — whose revelations of experiencing sexual abuse at the hands of his former Nickelodeon dialogue coach/manager Brian Peck triggered massive shockwaves throughout the industry — said he has experienced a “roller coaster of emotions” amid the support he’s received.
“It’s been a really nice weight lifted,” he told People. “It’s a roller coaster of emotions. I don’t want to sugarcoat it and make the message, ‘Hey, all you got to do is just tell somebody and get your story out and when you wake up the next day, it’s going to be gone and everything’s going to be fine and you’re going to walk through life without any pain or sorrow or sadness!’ It’s always going to be there, but it’s a lot nicer getting support.”
Bell, best known for his roles in The Amanda Show and as one-half of the starring duo in Drake & Josh, added that it was “nice” to receive apologies from Hollywood colleagues who had previously written letters of support for Peck amid his sentencing for his crimes, for which he received 16 months in prison and was required to register as a sex offender. Among those who had penned letters were James Marsden, Taran Killam and Boy Meets World actors Will Friedle and Rider Strong, with whom Peck previously worked.
Bell recalled the messages he received as being along the lines of: “‘I was completely lied to and bamboozled by this person, and it was a totally different story that was told to me. I would’ve never written that letter. I’m so ashamed.’”
Peck was arrested in 2003 on 11 charges, including sodomy, lewd act upon a child 14 or 15 by a person 10 years older and oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance, but the minor was never named until the release of Quiet on Set, where Bell spoke of the abuse — which occurred during his tenure on The Amanda Show at the turn of the millennium — for the first time.
In the docuseries, Bell — now primarily a singer-songwriter based out of Mexico City — said his experiences led him toward a self-destructive path including substance and alcohol abuse. In 2021, he entered a guilty plea for a felony charge of attempted child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, for which he received two years of probation and 200 hours of community service.
