Drake Bell Said That He Hoped “Quiet On Set” Would Help His Dad Realize That His Alleged Sex Abuse At 15 Years Old Was Not His Dad’s Fault
By Stephanie Soteriou,
2024-03-25
This article mentions allegations of child sex abuse and grooming.
As you are probably aware, Investigation Discovery’s much-anticipated docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV premiered last week, with a host of former child stars coming forward with allegations of inappropriate conduct during their time working for Nickelodeon in the ’90s and ’00s.
One of those former child stars is Drake Bell, who started acting at just 5 years old and eventually became a household name, thanks to roles in The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh .
In 2021, Drake was sentenced to two years' probation and 200 hours of community service after being charged with attempted endangering of children and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. Drake initially pleaded not guilty but later agreed to a plea deal and said that he was guilty of both charges.
His alleged victim read out a lengthy victim impact statement ahead of his sentencing, in which she claimed that Drake had groomed her from the age of 12 before sexually assaulting her in 2017, when she was 15 years old and he was 31.
IDIn Quiet on Set , Drake publicly details his own child sex abuse allegations for the first time, saying that he was the young actor involved in a 20-year-old trial against actor and dialogue coach Brian Peck.
Brian Peck is no relation to Drake’s Drake & Josh costar Josh Peck.
In 2004, Brian was sentenced to 16 months in prison after he pleaded no contest to two counts of child sex abuse against a then-unknown Nickelodeon star.
According to court documents , Brian was initially charged with 11 counts, including a lewd act upon a child, sodomy of a person under 16, attempted sodomy of a person under 16, sexual penetration by a foreign object, four counts of oral copulation of a person under 16, oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance, sending harmful matter, and using a minor for sex acts.
He pleaded “no contest” to a lewd act against a child and oral copulation. The remaining counts were dismissed.
Albert L. Ortega / Getty ImagesThe third episode of Quiet on Set focused on Brian and Drake, and viewers were left completely heartbroken over Drake’s father Joe Bell’s testimony on the show.
Going back to the beginning, Drake explains in the episode that his mom and dad divorced when he was 5, and going to auditions became his way of bonding with his father — who had no prior experience in the acting industry.
Joe fondly remembers, “Him and I just became so close. It was just natural, and he loved [acting].”
Drake got his big break when he landed a role in The Amanda Show when he was 13 years old, and while the first season was “great,” both he and his father remember things changing when Brian was hired as a dialogue coach for the second season.
Brian was 40 years old at the time, and Drake was 14.
“I was told that Brian was a good coach and that he could really get Drake some jobs,” Joe recalls. “He worked with Leonardo DiCaprio , he worked with this person, that person, I was like, 'Oh, OK.' Then he said, ‘You have to come to my house because that’s where I give the lessons.’
“Everything seemed OK in the beginning, but I was always within eye distance,” he adds.
IDAnd after hearing about how the industry can be for child stars, Joe was sure to be “very attentive” when it came to his son’s growing career.
“All the other parents would be seen and not heard,” he says. “I would never interrupt anything, but I very rarely sat in the greenroom. I’d always be on set somewhere where I could always keep my eyes on Drake.
“Unfortunately, I started to see Brian just start to hang around Drake too much, and it didn’t sit well with me. Drake would be in the dressing room or something, and in would pop Brian and just touch Drake, do things that… Wait a second, what are you doing? Drake can put that on himself ,” Joe claims. “The thing is, this is in front of people. He’d maybe walk over to Drake and be feeding him some lines or whatever and put his arm around his waist. Put his hand up on his shoulder and kind of run it down his arm and things like that, and this would happen routinely.”
But when Joe aired his concerns to the production team at Nickelodeon, he was allegedly accused of being anti-gay.
“I went to production and said, ‘I really am uncomfortable with this guy, Brian Peck, always being around my son,’” he recalls. “I go, ‘I don’t see anything abnormal, but I don’t have a good feeling.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, well, I don’t know if you knew it or not, but he’s gay. Maybe you’re just homophobic and you don’t understand he’s a touchy-feely guy?’ So I said, ‘OK,’ and it just kept not sitting well with me, so I told people on the set, and I was ostracized. So I backed off.”
Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesWhen Drake was offered one of the titular roles in the sitcom Drake & Josh , which premiered in 2003, Brian apparently started to tell Drake that Joe shouldn’t be his manager anymore.
“My dad started making it very difficult for Brian to be around me,” Drake says in the documentary. “I think Brian got a sense that my dad was on the watch, and he started to really drive a wedge between my dad and me. He started talking about how my dad’s stealing my money, nobody likes that my dad’s on set, he’s a real problem, so he just started making me believe that he was horrible for my career.
“Coming from someone like Brian, I was believing it because he’d been in the business for so long, so he must know more than us,” he adds.
Drake explains that he started to avoid his dad because he felt uncomfortable about not wanting him to be his manager anymore. Brian allegedly turned Drake’s mom against Joe too, as he apparently hired an attorney to prove that Joe was not handling Drake’s money correctly.
“There was never any mishandling of any funds,” Drake clarifies. “But it was like an army against my dad.”
Lee Celano / WireImage for Hollywood ReporterEventually, Drake’s mom called Joe to say that Drake no longer wanted him to be his manager. Breaking down in tears, Joe says of that moment: “At that time I said, ‘I want what my son wants.’ It’s killing me, it’s hurting me, it’s breaking my heart. But I want to do what Drake wants. So I said, ‘OK.’”
“Everything changed with Brian one morning,” Drake alleges. “I was sleeping on the couch where I’d usually sleep, and I opened my eyes, I woke up, and he was sexually assaulting me. I froze and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do or how to react. I had no idea how to get out of the situation.”
Drake was 15 years old at this point, and in the documentary he says that he was scared to say that he no longer wanted to spend nights at Brian’s house because he didn’t want his mom to ask questions.
“It just got worse and worse and worse and worse, and I was trapped and I had no way out,” Drake alleges. “The abuse was extensive, and it got pretty brutal. I really don’t know how to elaborate on that on camera, really. Why don’t you do this: Why don’t you think of the worst stuff that someone can do to somebody as a sexual assault, and that will answer your question.”
When Drake got a girlfriend, her mom quickly picked up on the fact that something was wrong. She took Drake to see a therapist because she felt as though he was “in quite a bit of danger,” but he was initially too scared to say anything.
Drake alleges that Brian would warn him that if he said anything, he had the power to stop producers and directors from working with him in the future. Drake says, “It was me believing that I will never be able to do this ever again. I didn’t want to risk that. I was doing what I loved to do, and so I just kept it inside.”
But then Drake “exploded” while on the phone with his mom one day. He says, “I’ve no idea what provoked it, I have no idea what happened, but I just screamed into the phone everything that had been happening to me.”
IDHis mom immediately called the police, and after a “pretty brutal” investigation where Drake had to be “excruciatingly detailed about every single thing, time that it happened” with two detectives, he called Brian and allegedly got him to admit what he’d done on the record.
Drake recalls phoning his dad after Brian’s arrest and asking, “Did you see they got him?”
At this point, Joe had no idea that his son was the alleged victim in the case, saying in the episode, “Drake says they arrested him for molestation. I go, ‘You’re kidding! I knew it. I knew it!’”
“And my dad just goes, 'I am so glad that he was not able to get his hands on you,’” Drake adds before admitting that he couldn’t bring himself to tell him the truth. “I just couldn’t do it. So I just said, ‘Yeah, they got him,’ and he says, ‘Oh, I’m so glad. I knew he was going to do something to someone.’”
Albert L. Ortega / Getty ImagesWhen asked how he felt when he learned that Drake was involved in the case, Joe immediately starts to cry and says, “Are you kidding? I’m not the same today. The pain is still there from the moment that I knew. I don’t wish this on any parent or child whatsoever. It’s just devastating.”
Joe’s emotional scenes in Quiet on Set struck a chord with viewers, who have taken to social media in the days since his episode aired to share their heartache over the situation.
“Drake's dad really broke my heart. He did everything he could to protect his son, and no one would listen to him,” one popular tweet reads.Somebody else wrote , “The interviews with Drake’s dad hit me the hardest. You could hear it in his voice how heartbreaking this entire experience was for him, and how much he loves his son.”
Another viral tweet shows a screenshot of Joe in tears on the documentary with the caption, “This poor man omg. Just trying to protect his son from a predator.”
IDAnd in a new podcast appearance, Drake has admitted that despite being “very cautious” about involving his dad in the project, he hoped it would finally bring him some closure.
Opening up on The Sarah Fraser Show , Drake said that he’d been approached about going on the record with his allegations in the past but was unable to open up because he didn’t feel comfortable.
But this time, Emma Schwartz — one of Quiet on Set ’s directors — was able to put him at ease, and Drake decided that it would be “cathartic” for his dad to be involved as well.
Drake explained, “Even though I was battling with, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I doing telling my story? Should I be doing this?’ [I was getting this feeling of] ‘Wow, it's all out there now. I can get it off my chest.’ And I felt that would be cathartic and beneficial for my dad to be able to do.”
Michael Tran / Getty Images“I’m sure that my dad puts a lot of blame on himself,” he added. “And I thought that this might be an opportunity for him to be able to realize that, you know, that it’s one person’s fault.”
Joe has not publicly commented since Quiet on Set aired.
Meanwhile, Brian was sentenced to 16 months in jail in October 2004 and has worked steadily in the industry since his release — including on the Disney Channel show The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
He has not commented on any recent reports about him or the contents of Quiet on Set .
You can stream Quiet On Set on Max in the US and on Discovery+ in the UK.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE, which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here .
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
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