Former child actor Drake Bell gave his first interview since the premiere of the devasting Investigation Discovery docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, where he alleged that dialogue coach Brian Peck sexually abused him as a child.
Bell appeared on The Sarah Fraser Show podcast to discuss the response to the series, and he spared no words for his former employer, Nickelodeon. The children’s network shared a statement in response to the series, which read “Now that Drake Bell has disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward.”
Bell responded,
“There’s a very well-tailored response saying, ‘Learning about his trauma,’ because they couldn’t say that they didn’t know about this or what had happened, or anything. So I think that was a really well-tailored response by probably some big attorney in Hollywood. I find it pretty empty, their responses, because, I mean, they still show our shows, they still put our shows on. And I have to pay for my own therapy, I have to figure out what — I mean if there was anything, if there was any truth behind them actually caring, there would be something more than quotes on a page by obviously a legal representative telling them exactly how to tailor a response.”
Bell also addressed the 41 actors who wrote letters in support of Brian Peck, which include James Marsden and Taran Killam, among others. “I haven’t gotten an apology, or a sorry, from anybody that had written letters or was involved in supporting him at all,” says Bell.
In yet another disturbing turn, Bell didn’t know about these letters until the docuseries petitioned the court to unseal them. Many of the letters were from people who worked on Drake & Josh. Bell said,
“And I worked with these people every day, and I thought they were my friends. They were people in positions of power, that they were my bosses. They were directors, they were producers. It was a situation where I thought I was surrounded by, I thought I was safe. I thought, OK, I thought I got rid of, the cancer has been carved out, we’re better now. And I had no idea that for four years, I was working alongside people who had supported him, and probably in the back of their mind were thinking of me in a certain way, and I thought they were my friends.”
(featured image: Michael Tran/Getty Images)
