Drake Bell is still trying to come to terms with the unsealed letters of support that were written for his sexual abuse case against Brian Peck.
“I don’t know how to put that into words but the letters were a new thing to me. I just found out about those last year,” Bell, 37, said on the Thursday, April 11, episode of the “Luminosity” podcast.
Bell was asked whether he read all the letters, to which he replied, “Oh yeah. I’ve read them multiple times. All of them.”
Last month, Bell broke his silence about being a victim of Peck’s abuse in Investigation Discovery’s four-part docuseries Quiet on Set, which addressed the negative aspects of childhood stardom at Nickelodeon. The third and fourth episodes exposed letters of support for Peck (who has no relation to Bell’s former Nickelodeon costar Josh Peck) written to the judge.
Peck, 63, was arrested in August 2003 for sexually abusing a then-unnamed child. Peck pleaded no contest to performing a lewd act with a victim around 14 or 15 years old and to oral copulation with a child under 16 years old, which resulted in a 16-month prison sentence.
After being handed the unsealed court documents by directors Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, Bell recalled his subsequent reaction.
“They are disgusting. There are some [letters] that I cannot believe what is being said. Just the blaming on me [and] the things being said about me,” Bell noted on Thursday. “They are unbelievable. There are some that I can’t even believe.”
He continued: “Some of the worst ones are handwritten. And some of them state, ‘Oh, I am aware of the charges but I would definitely work with him again and hire him again. I would recommend him to any set with kids.'”
Quiet on Set previously emphasized that it was unclear how much Peck’s friends knew about the charges being brought up against him at the time. Bell, meanwhile, recalled a large number of people showing up to the courtroom the day Peck was sentenced.
Bell also argued on Thursday’s podcast that Peck’s confession — which was recorded on a taped call before the arrest — was brought up in court. As a result, Bell didn’t believe that others were unaware of what charges they were responding to with their letters.
“There was no question of is what I am saying true and is it really how it went down,” Bell said. “It was there and they still wrote letters. That was my fear and my fear was confirmed when I walked into court and there was not an empty seat on his side.”
Some of the names and letters featured in the Quiet on Set doc included Rider Strong, Will Friedle, James Marsden and director Thomas DeSanto. (Strong, 44, Friedle, 47, and DeSanto, 56, have since walked back their support for Peck.)
Taran Killam and Kimmy Robertson were notable names because they appeared on Drake & Josh after asking the judge to grant Peck probation instead of prison time. Bell recently slammed those who wrote letters for Peck only to work with him later.
“I learned that later, I mean, there were multiple people that had supported him that went on to work on Drake & Josh. And I worked with these people every day, and I thought they were my friends,” Bell said on the March 22 episode of “The Sarah Fraser Show” podcast. “They were people in positions of power [writing letters], that they were my bosses. They were directors, they were producers. It was a situation where I thought I was surrounded by, I thought I was safe.”
Bell wasn’t sure how to deal with the revelation that Peck’s supporters were around him without his knowledge, adding, “I thought, ‘OK, I thought the cancer had been carved out. We’re better now.’ And I had no idea that for four years, I was working alongside people who had supported him, and probably in the back of their mind were thinking of me in a certain way, and I thought they were my friends.”
Bell later publicly confirmed that Strong is the only person who has since reached out to him personally. Others mentioned in the docuseries either issued a statement or have remained quiet.
Us Weekly has previously reached out to Marsden, Robertson and Killam for comment and the other actors who wrote letters featured in the doc.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
