Drake Bell is asking fans to lay off his former Drake & Josh co-star amid the fallout from explosive revelations he was sexually abused by a Nickelodeon dialogue coach, saying that Josh Peck had quietly reached out to him behind the scenes.
“Not everything is put out to the public,” Bell said in a TikTok posted on Wednesday.
The actor was featured prominently in Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a haunting four-part investigative docuseries pulling back the curtain on the danger that child performers were put in on Nickelodeon’s sets in the early aughts.
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Bell shared his story of the abuse he suffered at the hands of Brian Peck, a 41-year-old network employee, when he was 15. In 2004, Peck was sentenced to 16 months in prison and had to register as a sex offender after pleading no contest to sexually assaulting a child. In Quiet on Set, Bell, now 37, came forward as the victim at the center of the case.
Speaking about his experience, Bell does not go into detail about Peck’s abuse, but recalls it as “brutal.”
“Think of the worst thing that someone could do to somebody as a sexual assault, and that’ll answer your question,” he says.
In the wake of the docuseries’ broadcast, fans have rallied around Bell—and criticized other Nickelodeon stars of that era, including Josh Peck, with whom Bell starred on their titular series from 2004 to 2007. (Josh Peck and Brian Peck are not related.)
The furor grew louder on Monday, when Josh Peck posted a cryptic TikTok. Lip-syncing to an audio clip, Peck said, “If I haven’t talked to you since 2023, take that as a fucking sign that you don’t exist to me anymore. Damn, you fucking bug. You got sprayed with the Raid. Bye. See you never.”
It was unclear who, if anyone, the video was directed at, but many interpreted it as a call-out directed at Bell. “WE ALL WATCHED IT JOSH,” one user commented, with another adding, “He wants it quiet on set.”
Bell finally waded into the fray on Wednesday, posting his own TikTok addressing the matter. “I just want to clear something up,” he said. “I’ve noticed a lot of comments on some of Josh’s TikToks and some of his posts and I just want to let you guys know that processing this and going through this is a really emotional time and a lot of it is very, very difficult.”
After pointing out that “not everything” happened publicly, he continued, “I just want you guys to know that he has reached out to me, and it’s been very sensitive, but he has reached out to talk with me and help me work through this and has been really, really great. So I just wanted to let you guys know that and to take it a little easy on him.”
After Drake & Josh, Bell and Peck very publicly went their separate ways. Peck confirmed that the pair were no longer on friendly terms in a 2022 podcast interview.
“We were kids, right? Obviously, there were times when we were closer than not, but when inevitably the show ended–I mean, we’re just totally different kids,” he said. “Drake & Josh is something I’ll be synonymous with forever, and I’m proud of it. And I want to like the guy that my name is attached to forever, but unfortunately, it just sort of worked out the way that it did.”
