Drake Bell Calls Out Ned’s Declassified Cast for Joking About Sexual Abuse

Ryan Schwartz
·5-min read

Drake Bell is calling out a trio of fellow Nickelodeon grads for making light of his childhood trauma.

In a TikTok Live, the cast of Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide could be seen laughing about the recent revelations that Bell suffered sexual abuse at the hands of convicted child sex offender Brian Peck, a former dialogue coach and extra on The Amanda Show and All That. The embed below shows Ned’s Declassified star Devon Werkheiser yukking it up with his former co-stars, who initially remain off screen.

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“Get back in your hole, Daniel [Curtis Lee],” Werkheiser jokes. “Give me your holes!” He then looks directly into the camera to say, “Sorry, we shouldn’t be joking about this. We really shouldn’t.” But he continues laughing.

“Look, this is about us,” he claims, referring to the Ned’s Declassified cast. “Our set was not like that…. It’s f—king awful. The Drake Bell s—t, like, that’s crazy to hear. That is f—ked, man. And that never came out, which is really wild. Really wild.”

It’s at this point that Lindsey Shaw enters the frame; fellow co-star Daniel Curtis Lee remains off screen. Werkheiser then appears to respond to a TikTok user comment, which he first reads aloud.

“‘Oh, so you all were in on it,'” the comment read. Werkheiser laughs again.

“I’m not talking about this anymore,” he answers. “Guys, we can’t joke like this. Jesus!”

Upon seeing the clip, Bell called out Werkheiser, Shaw and Lee on X. “Ned’s Declassless,” he wrote. “This is wild… laugh it up guys… laugh it up… ‘Give me your h*les?!!’ Really?!”

TVLine has reached out to Werkheiser, Lee and Shaw’s reps for comment.

Werkheiser later apologized via a social media post in which he said he was “gutted” he hurt Bell.

Bell also recently called out Boy Meets World vets Will Friedle and Rider Strong, both of whom were among the actors who wrote letters in support of Peck at the time of his 2004 trial. Not only did Friedle and Strong not retract their statements (as Growing Pains’ Joanna Kerns did, featured in the Quiet on Set docuseries), but Quiet on Set producers have said they were met with silence when they reached out to the duo for any 20/20 hindsight.

Yet Friedle and Strong did comment on the early Quiet on Set buzz during a February episode of Pod Meets World. “By the time we heard about this case and knew anything about it,” Strong recalled, “it was always in the context of, ‘I [Brian] did this thing, I am guilty. I am going to take whatever punishment the government determines, but I’m a victim of jailbait. There was this hot guy!’ … So, in retrospect, he was making a plea deal and admitting one thing — which is all he admitted to us — but it looks like he was being charged with a series of crimes, which we did not know.”

In a pair of Instagram comments (per BuzzFeed), Bell singled out Friedle and Strong. “Will was 27 years old and Brian told him what he did,” he alleged. “Many people turned away and said no I won’t write a letter but they did. Will was not manipulated. Brian admitted it to him and he wrote the letter anyway. Then he worked with me on many many episodes of [Disney XD’s Ultimate Spider-Man] years later and never said a word to me about it.”

Regarding Strong, he added: “Rider was 24 years old when he wrote the letter and was told by Brian what he did. He wrote the letter anyway.”

Bell claimed that the reason Friedle and Strong addressed their previous defense of Peck on their podcast was “because they were told their letters are going to be made public. Everyone thought the letters would be sealed forever and no one would ever see them. This is their publicist telling them how to get ahead of the story.”

Bell rose to fame alongside Amanda Bynes and Josh Peck on children’s sketch-comedy series The Amanda Show, which ran for three seasons between 1999 and 2002. Two years later, Bell and Peck reunited on another Dan Schneider production, Drake & Josh, which ran for four seasons, between 2004 and 2007, and spawned the 2008 made-for-TV movie, Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh. Bell also headlined a live-action Fairly OddParents trilogy for the cable network, with three movies produced between 2011 and 2014.

In June 2021, Bell pled guilty to a felony charge of attempting to endanger children, and a misdemeanor charge of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. The charges stemmed from a 2017 incident involving Bell, then 31, and a 15-year-old girl he met online. According to authorities, Bell and the underage girl exchanged social media messages that were “sexual in nature.” He was sentenced to two years’ probation and 200 hours of community service.

Update: In related news, Bell asked fans to refrain from attacking his Drake & Josh co-star Josh Peck on social media. Some fans apparently went after Josh Peck for not publicly supporting Bell, but our sister site Deadline reports that Bell assured them that Peck had contacted him privately.

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