‘This Happened to Me’: Drake Bell Says Son Inspired Him to Talk About Sexual Abuse
Drake & Josh star Drake Bell said in a new interview that his three-year-old son helped inspire him to vocalize the alleged sexual abuse he suffered as a child star. Bell has made headlines in recent months as the principal subject of the five-part docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, where Nickelodeon crew members, child actors, and parents detail a kids network rife with misconduct, discrimination, and abuse. In an interview that aired on Today Monday, he decided to come forward once his mental health took a dive.
“I had just been going through so much and things were spiraling out of control personally and mentally,” Bell said. “And I finally found myself saying, ‘There’s two roads you can take here.’ I’d just had a son. And what’s the story that he’s going to get? Or is somebody else going to tell him my story, or am I going to be around to tell him and share my story? So I knew something had to change.”
In Quiet on Set, Bell said former dialogue coach Brian Peck began “sexually assaulting” him at age 15, and described feeling “trapped” as Bell could not drive to and from the Nickelodeon set. Bell, who shares his three-year-old son with ex-wife Janet Von Schmeling, said becoming a father helped drive his decision to come forward.
“As he grows, he’s going to hear things, and people are going to have opinions,” Bell said. “But my hope is that he’ll be able to say, ‘Yeah, my dad did go through that. Yeah, that did happen to my dad. Yeah, my dad did do that. But the man I’ve known my whole life and the man that I know today is a hero to me. And the fact that he’s been able to get through those things has helped me be able to face the world and not let it tear me down.’”
In August 2003, Los Angeles police arrested Peck on several charges including lewd acts with a child. By 2004, Peck pleaded no contest to two charges of child sexual abuse, was sentenced to 16 months in jail, and ordered to register as a sex offender. After Bell was identified as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, a Nickelodeon spokesperson previously told Rolling Stone, “We are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward.”
Following the release of Quiet on Set in March, former Nickelodeon employees have shared nightmarish stories of working on the kids network. On March 18, former Schneider assistant and Jack Ryan producer Amy Berg alleged in an X post that Nickelodeon showrunner Dan Schneider brought on her “panic attacks” and led her to develop a “significant heart arrhythmia,” or irregular heartbeat. And on May 14, Nickelodeon’s All That star Lori Beth Denberg accused Schneider of showing her pornography, lashing out on her, and initiating phone sex during her four seasons on the show. (Schneider filed a defamation lawsuit over the claims made in Quiet on Set May 1.)
Just last month at a Los Angeles Emmys event, Bell said he’s still “reeling from the idea of bearing my soul to the world,” adding that beyond the glamour of Hollywood lies a “dark cesspool of disgusting waste.”
During his Today interview, Bell said he is ready to see change. “This isn’t me — this is something that happened to me. Me moving forward, the decisions that I made in my past … these were my decisions, I made my mistakes. I did that, but that isn’t my soul,” he said. “That isn’t me — something happened to me. And now I get to see all of that in a clear picture.”