Drake Bell responds as Ned’s Declassified cast jokes about Nickelodeon allegations
Drake Bell calls fellow Nickelodeon stars "Ned's Declassless" after they joked about his abuse on a livesream
Aux News Drake Bell
Quiet On Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV aired its final episodes on Monday, and the Investigation Discovery docuseries has already made waves with fans of late ’90s to early 2000s Nickelodeon as well as child stars of that era. Dan Schneider’s television empire spawned lots of stars, but his weren’t the only shows on the network. Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide aired concurrently with Drake And Josh; the stars of that show have shared (and overshared) about their time as child actors on their podcast. Their experience was apparently quite different than what was going on at Schneider’s Bakery, as Devon Werkheiser quite ungracefully put it in a recent livestream.
A clip of the livestream posted to social media shows Werkheiser making an explicit joke to co-star Daniel Curtis Lee, “We told you never to speak about that. Get back in your hole, Daniel—and give me your holes!” Immediately, he adds, “Sorry, we shouldn’t joke about this, we really shouldn’t. … Listen, our set was not like that. And no, it’s fuckin’ awful. The Drake Bell shit is… like, that’s crazy to hear, that is fucked, man.” Giggling, Werkheiser later says, “I’m not joking about this anymore. Guys, we can’t joke like this, Jesus! Guys… sometimes humor helps us move through things.”
It is probably not appropriate, at least not on a livestream available to the public, to use humor to help “move through things” that happened to someone else. Especially when that someone else could see it and be hurt by it: Drake Bell, whose harrowing story of abuse at the hands of Brian Peck was a focal point of Quiet On Set, reposted the clip to his own Twitter/X page. He commented, “Ned’s Declassless…this is wild…laugh it up guys…laugh it up…’Give me your h*les?!!’ Really?!”
Bell (who pleaded guilty to child endangerment charges in 2021, though he has denied having sexual contact with a minor as he was accused) sat for an interview with Business Insider in the wake of the docuseries. He reflected that he felt no institutional support from Nickelodeon after Peck was convicted of molesting him. Bell now thinks the network could have hired a therapist, or given more support when he was clearly struggling (showing up to work late hungover, for example), rather than treating him like a “delinquent teenager” and pressuring him to be a “role model” when he felt “destroyed inside.”
Bell said that Nickelodeon “was a factory” that made kids ultra-famous before discarding them. (One example: Bell has never seen any money from Drake & Josh since it ended, as Nick’s child stars don’t get residuals for their hits.) “Everyone was just so expendable, and nobody cared,” he added. “We were treated, in reality, like garbage—OK, we’re done with you, toss you out in the back.”
In a statement to The A.V. Club, Nickelodeon says it has “adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.” Regarding Bell, the company stated, “Now that Drake Bell has disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward.”
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Wait, is it still that way under the current contract? Workers under the age of 18 aren’t entitled to residuals?!
*EDIT*: I re-read that. Nick doesn’t have to pay them residuals? I thought residuals were a requirement if you were not a certain class of guest star, etc?
Right? That’s blowing my mind. I’m not in the industry, but I just assumed residuals were always a thing. Are Nick shows not union or something?
I just assumed residuals were always a thing.Not from streaming they’re not.
I suspect the lack of residuals is because a lot of these shows were filmed in the now defunct Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, which was set up primarily to get around the unions and labor laws in L.A. Nickelodeon eventually moved its television production back to L.A., but anyone carried over from the Orlando era was probably still working under the shitty Orlando contract.
No. Specifically Drake & Josh filmed at Nick on Sunset. It is discussed in great detail.
Must be a Nick thing in some way. Other child actors have talked about residuals and getting them etc.
Residuals are going away, fast. 30 years ago when Jennifer Anniston & Co. made Friends, they had deals for the kind of residuals that set you up for life, and beyond. NOBODY gets those deals nowadays, especially on streamers.
I thought this is why the actor were on strike this year. To keep these residuals. I don’t think they are getting friends payouts
That seems like a part of the story that could use more of an explanation. Like what is the point of even having an actor’s union if someone who was the star of a show on a major cable channel, that ran for 4 seasons doesn’t get residuals? If it is that easy to get around a collective bargaining contract, it seems like it’s not a very good contract.
From abuser to victim. This guy has a great publicist.
This is such a lame take. I’d assumed that by now people understand that some people that become victims, after receiving no help with their trauma, turn into abusers themselves. It absolutely does not make the abuse they inflict on others acceptable, but we can understand that breaking the cycle incredibly tough, especially when they have no help. I think we can be sympathetic to that.
Can you say with certainty that had he not been molested, he would still have turned out to be an abuser? Note: I’m an armchair psychologist.
Right, why is hard for people? It’s called a *cycle* of abuse for a reason.
Yeah wait WHAT, how did they get away with not paying these kids residuals?!?
I hope that’s not still legal.
It’s one of those articles where there is no sympathetic figure.
Really?!? You can be sympathetic to the guy who was used, abused, and molested as a child? That’s some sociopathic thinking.
Well to be fair he was, likely though not convicted, of also probably attempting to abuse a minor. So there is that.And“Bell faced allegations from a former girlfriend who said that he verbally and physically abused her and that their relationship began when she was underage.”So he isn’t exactly a saint.
He’s not sympathetic because he was so psychologically damaged by Peck that he is mentally broken?You’re quite a piece of shit.
I wonder if his sainthood was perhaps molested out of him
Well isn’t that how priests end up saints? /sI kid and what happened to him was terrible, there is no question. But him, allegedly to quote Fact Boy, attempting to do that to a minor is also terrible. The question is though, is or were those thoughts he had just in general, or where they the result of what happened to him as a kid. I mean honestly ANY child star that makes it to adulthood, not totally mentally fucked up in amazing. Being a child star is just a terrible thing to do to MOST kids IMO doubly so when the parent(s) are pushing them into it to live vicariously through them or just for the money.
“The question is though, is or were those thoughts he had just in general, or where they the result of what happened to him as a kid.”
I agree that this is a good question to ask here. Unfortunately there isn’t really any way to know the answer to this question. But studies have shown that people who had suffered child abuse are more likely to be child abusers later in life. The majority of child abuse victims are not abusers, of course, but it does seem like there is a correlation there, which I find deeply sad.Ultimately none of this excuses his actions at all, because as an adult you are responsible for what you do, no matter what may have happened to you in the past. And this is even more true when we’re talking about how an adult acts around children, who have to depend on adult figures in their lives and do not have the same level of agency.
This is very true. I mean the entire situation is tragic.
“Well to be fair he was, likely though not convicted, of also probably attempting to abuse a minor.”Which was probably a result of his having been abused as a child and not having counseling to cope with it.“So he isn’t exactly a saint.”If somebody has to be a saint for you to have sympathy for them, that’s a great way to get out of ever having sympathy for anyone.
They don’t but it makes it a little harder to feel bad for him when he was likely trying to do to a minor what was done to him. Which you and another have mentioned could have be the result of what happened when he was a kid. The thing is this is an article where, there aren’t really any “good” guys. You have Ned’s Declassified’s folks making a joke about his “holes” and him being abused, Bell claps back calling them classless, they were, but like you know he also allegedly was trying to molest a minor. So it’s like there is bad all around.
“They don’t but it makes it a little harder to feel bad for him when he was likely trying to do to a minor what was done to him.”I don’t find it so. I find that my pity just expands to both of them.I don’t know whether or not there are “good” guys—not an opinion I can have either way because good people do bad things and bad people do good things; you can’t usually judge an entire person by a little bit of their actions—but the claim wasn’t that there are no “good” guys. The claim was that there are no sympathetic figures. I can sympathize with a molested child regardless of what he does later. It doesn’t mean I think his doing it to someone else is “good,” but it doesn’t make me sympathize with him less about what he experienced.
Fair enough. I guess for me it’s more of a spectrum. But fair point. Truth be told I don’t know who any of these people are outside of what is in the article, way to old to have watched them on TV.
Child abuse of any kind is just so fucked up for this reason. It’s visited on multiple children down and down the line until someone breaks the cycle, and what’s extra fucked up about this situation is that apparently people knew what had happened to him and if he had gotten help he could have been the one to break that cycle. There were failures by a lot of people here and obviously we all have choices in life an he has to be responsible for his but he didn’t make that choice alone. That’s not meant to lecture you. Just ranting my own thoughts because child abuse is just so fucked up.I also have never heard of any of these people. lol I was born in 1980.
You mean Drake Bell, the guy who was sexually and physically abusive to children in his own right? Yeah, I struggle to sympathize with him at this point. I guess that’s sociopathy to you.
I understand what you are saying, but, the way I look at it, the Drake Bell that was molested was a child at the time. I think we can have sympathy for Drake Bell the child and withhold it from Drake Bell the adult.
Is it really so hard to hold two ideas in your head? Yes, you can have sympathy for a victim of childhood sexual abuse while also holding them responsible for their actions if they’ve created new victims in their own right.He should be in jail. That wasn’t the case when he was a scared kid getting violated. I would think you could muster up an ounce of empathy for a human being who endured that, regardless of what they did later.
You can be sympathetic to the child who was abused, whitestain
Dan Schneider makes a rare appearance and actually responds to the allegations made against him in the new docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. 🙄
Nickelodeon is just now learning that one of their adult employees was convicted of abusing one of their child stars 20 years ago? I understand confidentiality, sealed records and whatnot. But that’s why you don’t release a statement, surely someone Sherlocked out what happened.