Drake Bell Opens Up About Josh Peck's Support After Quiet on Set Release

While appearing on Tuesday's episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, the actor shared his thoughts on Peck reaching out to him privately after Bell revealed he was the victim of child sexual abuse in ID's Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.

Although much of the bombshell docuseries focused on Dan Schneider's allegedly abusive behavior, the biggest headlines came from Bell's shocking reveal that he was the child star who came forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck.

"Josh worked on The Amanda Show, so he saw and knew what was going on," Bell told Not Skinny But Not Fat host Amanda Hirsch. "But I appreciate that he reached out to me privately and didn't go straight to the media because he was there with me and saw what I was going through."

Before the now-37-year-old and Peck appeared on Drake & Josh together, they both starred on The Amanda Show alongside Amanda Bynes. According to Bell, Peck and others who worked on Nickelodeon sketch comedy series were aware of the situation, but likely not the whole story.

"I don't think he knew specifics, but there were people who worked on the show that knew who it was," Bell said. "He just knew how sensitive this was for me and after watching the documentary, he learned so much that I had gone through and I think he was just so sensitive and made sure to reach out to me privately rather than just going straight to social media."

Following Quiet on Set's release last month, fans found Peck's (no relation to Brian Peck) initial public silence so disconcerting, but Bell later set the record straight in a TikTok video,

"I just want to clear something up," he explained. "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."

"So not everything is put out to the public, but 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," he added. "So I just wanted to let you guys know that and to take it a little easy on him."

The next day, Peck shared a statement on Instagram.

"I reached out to Drake privately, but wanted to give my support for the survivors who were brave enough to share their stories of emotional and physical abuse on Nickelodeon sets with the world," he wrote. "Children should be protected. Reliving this publicly is incredibly difficult, but I hope it can bring healing for the victims and their families as well as necessary change to our industry."

In the wake of the 2003 sexual abuse case against him, Brian Peck pleaded no contest to two charges of child sexual abuse and was sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.

"I think Brian was able to pull the wool over a lot of people's eyes and paint a picture that was a far cry from reality," Bell told Hirsch on Tuesday's podcast episode.

Meanwhile, also during his appearance on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, Bell addressed his 2021 child engagement conviction, in which he was sentenced to two years probation for pleading guilty to criminal charges involving a minor.

During Bell's sentencing in July 2021, per court reports, his female accuser read a victim impact statement calling him a pedophile and claiming he "sexually abused" her and sent "blatantly" sexual photos and messages to her when she was 15.

Bell has previously claimed in an Instagram video in September 2021 that "there no sexual images, nothing physical, between me and this individual." During his conversation with Hirsch, Bell again claimed he only sent messages and said the "18 months of subpoenaing" supported that.

"I'd responded on some DMs and was incredibly irresponsible, and got myself into conversations that I shouldn't have had, and I ended up finding out that I was talking to someone that I shouldn't have been talking to, and it snowballed into these allegations that were not true, and it just turned into this big thing," he said. "I was being investigated, and that was really difficult on my family, and thankfully through 18 months of subpoenaing my social media and computers and witnesses and everything, it turned out that a lot of, most of, what was being accused of me was not true."

As for why he pleaded guilty, the musician said, "I did have these conversations and took responsibility for that and ended up pleading guilty, because I just financially was just devastated, and I'd just had a son, and I didn't wanna put my family through all of this anymore, so I ended up going through the process the way that I did, and you know, very regretful."

"There's just so much that I've had to deal with, and through that, not having the tools, not knowing how to process things, I made a lot of decisions in my life that I shouldn't have made and hurt a lot of people," he continued.

"I finally found out [her age], and I cut communications, and things got, I think she got upset, and she was coming to concerts still, and I was doing everything I could to kind of keep my distance," he added. "Then she made all these allegations of things that happened at a concert, but throughout the investigation, there were witnesses who were there the whole time who refuted it, people who weren't even connected with me that were friends of hers and her family's that were there the whole time, and so, no, and a lot of the things that she said about sending inappropriate pictures and things like this, it was able to be investigated and show that none of that existed."

Along with the two-year probation, Bell was sentenced to 200 hours of community service in California and ordered not to have any contact with the victim.

At the time of his plea, he said he accepted it because his "conduct was wrong." He added, "I'm sorry that the victim was harmed in any way -- that was obviously not my intention. I have taken this matter very, very seriously, and again I just want to apologize to her and anyone else who may have been affected by my actions."

Listen to Bell's full interview with Hirsch, below.