It was a shock to viewers watching the 2024 TV premiere of Quiet on Set when Drake Bell, star of the kid's bromance TV show Drake & Josh, spoke out about the abuse he suffered during his time at Nickelodeon. The abuser was actor/director/writer Brian Peck, who worked with Bell on The Amanda Show. After the Boy Meets World stars at the time supported Peck, Bell revealed where he stands with the cast now.
When Drake Bell was interviewed on Investigation Discovery’s docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, he revealed that at 15, he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by dialogue coach Brian Peck. In 2004, Peck was charged with 11 counts of lewd conduct with a minor regarding Bell’s case, resulting in a 16-month jail sentence and being registered as a sex offender. At the time, multiple Hollywood A-listers supported the actor/singer’s abuser, including the cast of Boy Meets World. On The Sarah Fraser Show podcast video, Bell spoke about stars like Will Friedle and Rider Strong reaching out to him to apologize for past support of Peck:
Will [Friedle] reached out. That was really sweet. Rider [Strong] reached out, he was very apologetic and sweet. We had a really long, like, two-hour conversation. They check in on me and everything but, yeah, that's about it.
Drake Bell also told Sarah Fraser he didn’t know about the letters of support celebrities sent to Brian Peck until the docuseries. During Bell’s episode on Quiet on Set, the former Nickelodeon star expressed how “unbelievable” it was when he read all of the letters defending Peck who blamed the musician, with plenty saying they’d still work with the Good Burger actor again despite the charges against him.
Other than the Boy Meets World cast, other A-listers expressed their regrets for their previous support, like the Nickelodeon directors Beth and Rich Correll, who voiced how “awful” they felt “being on the wrong side of a horrific situation.” The sitcom star also said he’s “been talking” to Drake and Josh co-star Josh Peck, who reached out to him privately after the docuseries came out.
Back in March, when Zoey 101 actress Alexa Nikolas called out the Boy Meets World cast in an Instagram post for initially defending Brian Peck, Drake Bell spoke out about Will Friedle and Rider Strong’s connection to his abuser's support during the time it happened. In the since-deleted comments, the Jerry Maguire actor claimed Strong and Friedle, who were both in their ‘20s, were told by Peck what he did and wrote their letters anyway:
Many people turned away and said 'No I won’t write a letter,' but [Strong and Friedle] did. Everyone thought the letters would be sealed forever and no one would ever see them. This is their publicist telling them how to get ahead of the story.
One month after Alexa Nikolas’ Instagram post, Will Friedle and Rider Strong told their side of the story on an episode of their podcast Pod Meets World. The Kim Possible voice actor said he would spend a substantial amount of time with Peck initially thinking of him as a “great, funny guy [...] you wanted to hang out with.” However, the Nickelodeon employee allegedly made Friedle feel “it was clearly the fault of his victim:”
My initial instinct because of the years I've been with him was like 'Well, yeah, of course, it can't be you. Can't be. Right, you're innocent. It can't possibly be that. So you sidle up to the guy who now you look back on as an adult and you go, 'He's horrible.' And my instinct initially was, 'Well, my friend can't be [this person], this can't be. So it's got to be the other person's fault,' has to be the story. Of course, it makes complete sense. The way that he's saying it, and 'You're damn right, it's that kid's fault. How dare he?' And I look back at that now as an adult, and it makes me want to cry that I ever was that naive.
Rider Strong said that Brian Peck gave him the impression he was just “a victim of jailbait.” As you couldn’t Google back then the allegations a celebrity was hit with, the Girl Meets World star claimed he didn’t know Peck was charged with a series of crimes against him. As he and Friedle were among the huge number of celebrities on one side of the courtroom supporting the abuser, while Drake Bell was on the other side with just his mother and attorneys, the Batman Beyond voice actor ultimately admitted to being on “the wrong side of everything.”
While the cast of Boy Meets World and other Hollywood stars initially sided with Brian Peck when the abuse allegations surfaced, it appears that actors Will Friedle and Rider Strong are apologetic for their involvement in the support letters. Fortunately, Drake Bell has forgiven the two actors and is seemingly on good terms with them as they check in on him. You can watch Bell's appearance in the five-part docuseries Quiet on Set with your Max subscription.
