Josh Peck and Other Former Nickelodeon Stars Respond to Quiet on Set Allegations
Actor Josh Peck (L) and Drake Bell (R) attend Drake Bell's album release party for "Ready Steady Go!" at Mixology101 Credit - Paul Archuleta—FilmMagic/Getty Images
Former Nickelodeon stars have shared their reactions to Quiet on Set, the Investigation Discovery documentary series that explores allegations of unsafe work environments on the sets of multiple hit shows created by the producer Dan Schneider. On Thursday, Josh Peck, who co-led the show Drake & Josh with Drake Bell, released a statement on Instagram addressing Bell speaking out in the docuseries about being sexually assaulted by Brian Peck (no relation to Josh Peck), a dialogue coach at Nickelodeon.
“I finished the Quiet On Set documentary and took a few days to process it,” Peck wrote. “I reached out to Drake privately, but wanted 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.”
He added: “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.”
Bell and Peck played stepbrothers on Drake & Josh, which ran from 2004 to 2007. After Quiet on Set aired on Max on March 17, social media users kept a close eye on Peck’s TikTok and Instagram accounts to see if he would say anything in response. On Monday, Peck posted a video on TikTok where he’s lip-syncing to an audio that says, “If I haven’t talked to you since 2023, take that as a sign that you don’t exist to me anymore.”
Viewers took this as a slight toward Bell because in 2022, Peck said that he and Bell were no longer friends on Dave Portnoy, Josh Richards, and Brianna Chickenfry’s podcast. “Drake & Josh is something I’ll be synonymous with forever, and I’m proud of it. And I want to like the guy that my name is attached to forever, but unfortunately, it just sort of worked out the way that it did,” he said.
On Wednesday, Bell posted a TikTok video addressing the comments about Peck and rumors that he’s been unsupportive, telling his followers to “take it a little easy on him.” The video amassed over 21 million views in less than a day.
Peck is not the only former Nickelodeon star that has spoken out. Bell’s former TV mom, Nancy Sullivan, posted a statement on Instagram on Wednesday saying, “It broke my heart into a million pieces to hear just how much Drake was holding inside while we were working together. I was both devastated and proud seeing the man he's grown into sit down on camera and bravely tell his truth.”
Not everyone’s comments were positive. Devon Werkheiser, who was in Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, and a few of the cast members from the show were criticized for making light of the docuseries in a TikTok livestream. In a clip of the livestream that was later posted to X, Werkheiser makes a joke and then says, “Sorry, we shouldn’t joke about this. We really shouldn’t. ... Listen, our set was not like that. And no, it’s f-cking awful. The Drake Bell sh-t, that’s crazy to hear.”
Bell called Werkeheiser out on X and quote-tweeted a clip of the live stream and said, “Ned’s Declassless…this is wild…laugh it up guys…laugh it up.”
Werkheiser later apologized for “being an idiot.” In a statement posted on X on Tuesday, he said, “I feel horrible that my dumbass was even speaking about it without seeing it.”
He ends the statement by saying that he’s “truly heartbroken about what [his] fellow actors went through” and is “sorry for compounding any hurt.”
Write to Moises Mendez II at [email protected].