From dynamic duo to frenemies! Drake Bell and Josh Peck skyrocketed to fame after their hit Nickelodeon sitcom Drake & Josh premiered in 2004. Throughout four seasons and two made-for-TV movies, they starred as two completely opposite teens who became stepbrothers that were forced to share a room.
While Bell and Peck, both 30, were friends during filming, the pair seemed to have drifted after wrapping the series in 2007. Bell wasn’t invited to Peck’s June 2017 nuptials to Paige O’Brien, and took to Twitter to hint that he was peeved. “True colors have come out today,” he wrote in since-deleted tweet. “Message is loud and clear. Ties are officially cut. I’ll miss you brother.”
A source told Us Weekly at the time that they haven’t spoken in three years. “Josh was really hurt,” the insider claims. “They aren’t close anymore and Josh had a very small wedding.”
A few months later, Bell confirmed to Us that they had worked out their differences and were in a good place.
“It’s interesting, we’re actually closer than we’ve been in a while … It’s totally great. It’s all love. We’re brothers, man,” the musician told Us in September 2017. “We’ve been working together for 18 years, maybe even longer now. So we’ve had our ups, we’ve had our downs, it’s like we’re real brothers. It’s kind of that sibling rivalry and sibling love and it’s the whole thing.”
Bell, who still believed that his reaction was “completely justifiable” revealed how the pair made amends.
“We ran into each other at the VMAs. It was cool because I had called him and we were talking about meeting up. And that’s always kind of nerve-racking. ‘What am I going to say? Where are we going to meet? The ride over?’ So I was really happy that it happened organically,” he shared. “And he just kind of walked up behind me and I was like, ‘Oh. We have to deal with this right now.’ And so we were able to talk and hash it out and it’s all good.”
In June 2021, the Amanda Show alum was arraigned and charged with two criminal counts of attempted endangering children and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. Bell initially pleaded not guilty but later changed his plea during his pretrial hearing.
The California native was sentenced to two years probation the following month and Peck told Variety that the situation was “unfortunate.” Nearly two years later, Bell and his ex-wife Janet Von Schmeling officially announced their separation after four years of marriage in January 2023 following previous reports of their split in late 2022.
Despite his and Bell’s ups and downs over the years, Peck doesn’t regret the time they spent together as child actors. “Maybe I would have thought twice about having my awkward teenage years [air] in reruns,” he exclusively told Us in March 2023. “But the reality is [that] from Drake & Josh to everything I’ve done since then, I’m very proud to have made families happy. I feel incredibly lucky to be 36 and still working and [doing] something that I love.”
Scroll down to relive the costars’ friendship through the years:
