Drake Bell and Josh Peck have finally reunited… And they have a LOT to unpack.
It’s been a long and winding road for the Nickelodeon stars. They burst onto the screen as step brother’s in the 2000s sitcom Drake & Josh, but eventually drifted apart as they grew up.
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Drake & Josh’s feud
S**t really hit the fan in 2017 when Josh married his now-wife Paige O’Brien and didn’t invite Drake to the wedding. And Drake took that VERY personally. He posted on X (Twitter) at the time:
“True colors have come out today. Message is loud and clear. Ties are officially cut. I’ll miss you brother.”
Josh revealed on the BFFs podcast in 2022 that Drake also messaged him privately on the day of his wedding “cursing” him out and “coming” for him. He explained:
“It’s delusional because it is like, ‘Bro, it is like we worked at Coffee Bean together when we were 16. I am sorry that I am 31 now and I might have lost your number.’”
We can certainly see both points. At the end of the day, they were just past coworkers! Yet at the same time, they were coworkers for a LONG time. You could see feeling a little disrespected if you worked closely with someone for a long time, and they didn’t invite you to their wedding, right?
In any case, it was upsetting for fans to learn the two weren’t as buddy-buddy IRL as they were on the show.
Josh learns about Drake’s abuse
But everything changed last year. Drake heartbreakingly revealed in the documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV that he was sexually abused by dialogue coach Brian Peck during his early Nickelodeon days. Peck (no relation to Josh) had been arrested back in 2003, but his victim’s identity had been kept secret all those years.
Related: TikToker Claims Impractical Jokers Star Sexually Assaulted Her At 19
After that revelation emerged, Josh publicly praised Drake and the other abuse survivors who came forward on the show:
“I finished the Quiet On Set documentary and took a few days to process it. I reached out to Drake privately, but want to give my support for the survivors who were brave enough to share their stories of emotional and physical abuse on Nickelodeon sets with the world. Children should be protected. Reliving this publicly is incredibly difficult, but I hope it can bring healing for the victims and their families as well as necessary change to our industry.”
Drake accepted the olive branch. He later praised his former co-star for the “sensitive” way he offered support, and that was that. It’s now been a whole year, and the duo have officially reunited for the first time since everything went down.
Reconnecting
Drake appeared on Josh’s Good Guys podcast on Monday for an all-encompassing conversation that promises to get into everything. This was only part one!
First, on their off-and-on friendship, Drake explained:
“I have my perspective. Especially because we were going through this, like, during our adolescence and when we were changing and learning. It’s going to be interesting to see what my perspective was and what your perspective was and if they align at all. I would say there were times when we hung out a lot and we were close and then there were times when — not for any reason — but just we weren’t.”
Josh agreed, adding:
“There were times where it was like, we might not have been getting along. But I think we were dealing with a lot of s**t outside of our relationship or outside of us working together.”
Drake unpacks abuse timeline
Drake had more going on than Josh ever imagined… Brian Peck was arrested in 2003 for multiple sexual abuse crimes. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison and was forced to register as a sex offender for what he did to Drake behind the scenes of The Amanda Show. But while the arrest was before Drake & Josh took off, it wasn’t before they shot the pilot. Meaning Peck was still at Nickelodeon at that time.
Drake recalled what that was like for him:
“That big break between Drake & Josh and The Amanda Show is when I told my mom what was going on. We went to the police, there was the investigation and all the stuff that you saw in the documentary. That was when all of that was going on. Then when we shot the pilot, we were in the middle of the investigation. But nobody had known anything because Brian hadn’t been arrested. So I had to come back from The Amanda Show — where Brian worked and where the abuse was happening. The worst part about it being having a monster in your safe place. That [was] the only place I [felt] comfortable is when I got to set and hang out with you guys.”
That’s so heartbreaking… He was a CHILD forced to be around this “monster” — and unable to tell anyone! He talked about the time the vocal coach came to set during filming:
“That’s where I feel safe, but it sucks because [it didn’t feel safe with him]. I’m coming back and he hasn’t been arrested. He came and visited during the pilot. I still had to play like, ‘Oh, hey. We are cool. Like, you’re about to get arrested, bro. And you don’t even know.’ He’s just walking around set during the pilot.”
And to make things worse, Drake said he also had to worry about how the fallout of Brian’s arrest could affect the show:
“Is this gonna hurt our show? When this drops, is Josh gonna look at me and be like, ‘Bro, you took our dream away’ … I was losing my hair. I had these giant scabs on my head. I had no idea why and there were like golf ball size scabs where I’m losing my hair. Then I got to go back and shoot the show.”
What a truly horrific thing for a child to have to go through. Poor Drake.
Josh ‘had a feeling’ about Brian
Josh revealed he “had a feeling” something was up with Brian after he stopped showing up on set, but that he had no idea what had happened between him and Drake… Save for one eyebrow-raising conversation he had with his co-star:
“He was gone. I didn’t know anything except I had a feeling something happened. And I remember we’re in the car and I said, ‘Do you still talk to Brian?’ You just looked at me like, ‘No, Brian’s a really bad guy.’ And I remember thinking, ‘That is all that I needed to know. I didn’t know anything more than that but I was like, ‘That’s clear. I get it.’”
How chilling. You can listen to more from part one of their conversation (below):
Part two of their conversation is set to drop next Thursday.
If you have sincere cause to suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence and would like to learn more about resources, consider checking out https://www.rainn.org/resources
[Images via Josh Peck/YouTube & Nickelodeon/Paramount+]
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