Drake Bell responds as Ned's Declassified cast jokes about Nickelodeon allegations

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.”