Drake Bell Says No Actors Who Supported Abuser Reached Out
Drake Bell says in the latest episode of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV Sunday (April 7) that none of the actors who supported his abuser have reached out to him. The former child star revealed in the documentary’s latest episode that two of the actors wrote character letters for dialogue coach Brian Peck in the 2003 case.
As we previously reported, Peck, who was also known as a character called “Pickle Boy” on All That, was arrested in August 2003 on eleven charges related to allegations that he’d sexually abused an unnamed child. The following year in May, Peck pleaded no contest to performing a lewd act with a 14- or 15-year-old and to oral copulation with a minor under 16.
He was sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender that October. Until now, Bell remained anonymous as the minor pertaining to that case.
Drake Bells Says No One Reached Out
In the fifth episode of the docu-series, the Drake & Josh star was asked by host Soledad O’Brien how he felt about Boy Meet World stars Will Friedle and Rider Strong’s decision to support Peck in court on their podcast Pod Meets World.
Bell, 37, appeared virtually from Mexico City and told O’Brien that he and Friedle worked together on the animated Ultimate Spider-Man series (2012-2017). Bell voiced Spider-Man, while Friedle voiced Deadpool.
Bell said there were plenty of opportunities for Friedle to apologize or even acknowledge it, but never did. He did admit that it is also a “very difficult subject to bring up” in a work environment. “That’s the thing that’s hard about this — everyone deals with their trauma in different ways,” Bell says during Sunday’s episode. “Everybody comes to different conclusions at different times in their lives and realizations.”
Prior to the documentary release, Friedle and Strong said on their podcast that they had felt “shame” for being “misled” by Peck of being a victim in the case. The duo said they went to court with him to support him “on the wrong side of everything, of course having no idea. It was filled with child actors, to the point that the victim’s mother turned around and said: ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you, and it doesn’t change what you did to my kid.’” Notably, both Strong and Friedle were in their 20s when this was going on.
Calling them out on Instagram following their podcast episode, former Nickelodeon star Alexis Nikolas hit out at Strong and Friedle for not apologizing directly to Bell. The former Zoey 101 actress wrote: “YOU cared more about Hollywood, Pizzagate, and Boy Meets World than a child that was molested by someone YOU defended and never apologized to!”
Bell stated that Brian admitted to Will exactly what he did. “Will was not manipulated. Brian admitted it to him, and he wrote the letter anyway,” he wrote. Then, Bell said Friedle worked with him years later and never said a word to him about it because they thought the letters they wrote were going to be made public.
In the doc’s newest episode, Bell revealed, “Nobody’s reached out to me.” The documentary revealed that more than 40 people had written character letters for Peck, including Amanda Show alum Taran Killam, X-Men‘s James Marsden, and Growing Pains star Alan Thicke.
Bell reiterated that “not one person who’s written one of those letters” has personally reached out to him. However, it doesn’t seem as though Bell shows any hostility towards Strong. On Friday, Bell tweeted that he felt “nothing but love and forgiveness for him.”
DrakeBell.ethᵍᵐ on Twitter: "I just had the most amazing conversation with @RiderStrong we are all healing together. I have nothing but love and forgiveness for him. / Twitter"
I just had the most amazing conversation with @RiderStrong we are all healing together. I have nothing but love and forgiveness for him.
Bell also responded to those on social media who are bashing his mother for not protecting him more — something he says isn’t fair. As revealed in the documentary, it was Drake’s dad who seemed aware that there was something off about Peck. However, Peck successfully drove Drake and his father apart at the time, so when Drake was staying with his mother, he was able to take advantage of her. Drake admitted in the doc that Peck was “so calculated” and knew all the right things to say to continue to abuse Drake right under everyone’s noses.
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Child stars—whether gifted with a dimpled grin, soulful eyes, a contagious personality, or stellar acting chops—have captivated the public imagination since the invention of celluloid. From Depression-era darling Shirley Temple to the infectiously adorable Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame, these talented tykes routinely deliver box office gold, and they are some of Hollywood’s most important players. They appear to lead charmed lives, graced with fortune, fame, and adoring fans. For some, success is full of adventure and limitless opportunity—but for many, fame brings punishing schedules, addiction, abuse, and emotional breakdowns.
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We’ve sifted through movie databases, film histories, celebrity biographies, and digital archives to compile this list of popular pint-sized actors from 1919 through 2021. Keep scrolling to see which child stars were born in your birth year: