Drake Bell only found out who wrote letters of support for Brian Peck after participating in Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set docuseries — and the actor was shocked to see how many people worked with him after being on the other side of his sexual abuse trial.
“I learned that later, I mean, there were multiple people that had supported him that went on to work on Drake & Josh,” Bell, 37, said on the Friday, March 22, episode of “The Sarah Fraser Show” podcast. “And I worked with these people every day, and I thought they were my friends.”
Bell broke his silence about Peck’s abuse in the two-part doc, which exposed letters of support for Peck (who has no relation to his former Nickelodeon costar Josh Peck) written to the judge.
“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,” he explained. “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.”
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.
The directors behind Quiet on Set, Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, were able to unseal the letters of support in the case, which was mentioned in the third and fourth installment of the doc. Some of the names and letters featured 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.
In the doc, Business Insider journalist Kate Taylor said it was unclear how much Peck’s friends knew about the charges being brought up against him at the time. Bell, for his part, noted on Friday’s podcast that some of the people who wrote letters were in the courtroom — and as a result knew his identity and were aware of the charges against Peck.
“To sit there and say, ‘Yes, I did this, but it’s not how they’re painting it.’ I mean, I can’t imagine [Peck] framing it in a way where 41 people, adults, say ‘Oh, well that totally makes sense, how you’re telling me, that makes sense,’” Bell added on Friday about how he questioned people’s decision to advocate for Peck after he admitted to molesting a minor.
In Robertson’s letter to the judge, which was shown in the docuseries, she wrote, “I believe with all my heart that Brian was pressured and pushed beyond belief before he caved in.” Robertson, who appeared in Peck’s 1990 movie The Willies, has continued to post photos with the dialogue coach as recently as 2021.
Killam, 41, meanwhile, referred to Peck’s arrest as “too out of character.”
“When I found out about Brian being arrested I was shocked. Brian is the last person I would expect to be charged with criminal activities. My first thought was, ‘This is a mistake.’ I know many of our mutual friends had similar thoughts,” he wrote in his letter. “I have seen the effects this situation has had on Brian and I know for a fact that he regrets any mistakes made and that this is certainly not something that would ever happen again.”
Killam concluded: There has yet to be a set that I work on, where someone doesn’t know Brian, and also doesn’t think the world of him. He honestly is one of the most well liked, well-respected people in this business.”
According to Bell, he hasn’t spoken to anyone who supported Peck publicly or privately, adding on Friday, “I haven’t gotten an apology, or a sorry, from anybody that had written letters, or was involved in supporting him at all.”
Us Weekly has previously reached out to 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).
