While speaking at the For Your Consideration Panel for “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” Drake Bell shared that those who wrote letters of support for his abuser, Brian Peck, included “Drake and Josh” crew members, such as his “favorite director” whom he “requested” for the Nickelodeon sitcom and a woman whom he “worked with every day for four years” who was “basically his boss.”
Bell, who was revealed to be the John Doe victim in Peck’s 2004 conviction in Episode 2 of “Quiet on Set,” took the stage at the Saban Media Center in Los Angeles Tuesday night to discuss his journey around the tell-all docuseries. He was joined by fellow contributors Giovonnie Samuels, Bryan Hearne, Kate Taylor and “Quiet on Set” co-directors Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz.
When initially approached to share his story on “Quiet on Set,” Bell was “totally going to ignore” the offer. He was “struggling a lot at that point in [his] life,” and had already been approached by a handful of journalists who, when turned away, told him that “because of people like you, there’s going to be more children hurt the industry.”
However, Robertson and Schwartz eventually proved their patience and compassion to Bell, offering to speak off record about the incident regardless of his involvement in “Quiet on Set,” and spearheading the initiative to have Peck’s letters of support unsealed. When Schwartz shared the letters with Bell, the level of support for Peck within the industry was shocking. It was then Bell decided to go public with his involvement in the case.
“It showed me that there was way more to this than just the certain people you have to watch out for,” said Bell. “That’s when it’s starting to snowball into, alright, this story needs to get out because this is really this is a much bigger issue than I ever imagined.”
“Quiet on Set” features Nickelodeon cast and crew who share horror stories about working on some of Nick’s biggest shows of the late ’90s and early 2000s, including “All That,” “The Amanda Show, “Zoey 101” and “Drake and Josh.” The show mainly focuses on the behavior of longtime Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider and the repeated assault of Bell by dialogue coach Peck, whose two charges of child sexual abuse were kept quiet by the children’s network.
While Peck has yet to respond, Schneider has posted an interview to his “DanWrap” YouTube channel where he defends his behavior during his time with Nickelodeon. He says the jokes from his shows that have been deemed overtly sexual by “Quiet on Set” were “written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny and only funny.”
Schneider continued, “We went out of our way to make sure [the child actors] were safe and that everything was done properly. But if a kid was scared and didn’t want to do [something], the kid shouldn’t have to do it. Period. The end. And if I had known at the time, I would’ve changed it on the spot.”
