Former Nickelodeon stars Devon Werkheiser, Lindsey Shaw and Daniel Curtis Lee have issued an apology to Drake Bell after joking about his childhood trauma.
Bell, 37, slammed the former Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide stars after they made an inappropriate joke about him being sexually abused when asked about the docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV during a TikTok live on Monday.
After revealing he was the victim of ‘unspeakable’ and ‘brutal’ sexual abuse, at the hands of his former dialogue coach Brian Peck, on the four-part series, Werkheiser, Shaw and Lee briefly filmed themselves laughing as they declared how their ‘set was not like that.’
‘Daniel, we told you never to speak about that. Get back in your hole, Daniel, and give me your holes,’ Werkheiser, 33, quipped, before immediately backpedaling on the insensitive remark. ‘Sorry, we shouldn’t joke about this. We really shouldn’t.’
After viewing footage of the livestream uploaded to X, Bell slammed the actors’ crass words.
Former Nickelodeon stars Devon Werkheiser, Lindsey Shaw and Daniel Curtis Lee have apologized after making insensitive remarks that seemed to make fun of the sexual abuse suffered by fellow child star Drake Bell
‘Ned’s Declassless…this is wild…laugh it up guys…laugh it up…’Give me your h*les?!!’ Really?!’ he fired.
On Thursday, the trio explained on their Ned’s Declassified Podcast Survival Guide podcast the comments had been taken out of context.
‘If you haven’t seen the clip, if you haven’t seen what’s going on, we were on a TikTok Live being asked to comment on the Quiet on Set documentary, which we hadn’t seen, and a super s**t joke came out that was referenced at Daniel and looked like I was talking about Drake,’ Werkheiser explained.
‘We f**ked up. I get it. We hadn’t seen the doc and everyone was asking us for our opinions on it.’
The Artificial actor later admitted that he ‘felt like a piece of s**’ after the Drake & Josh star called them ‘declassless’ and slammed them for ‘laughing’ at his trauma.
‘I know it looks like I’m laughing at this and I f**king wasn’t, but I know what it looks like, and that Drake saw it … yeah,’ Werkheiser clarified.
‘I just felt so f**king awful, knowing that Drake saw us in that context.’
Shaw, for her part, said she regretted that the group showed such ‘insensitivity’ to such a serious topic.
The trio were replying to a question about the docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV during a TikTok live March 18. ‘We f**ked up. I get it. We hadn’t seen the doc and everyone was asking us for our opinions on it,’ Werkheiser, 33 said on their podcast Thursday
The actors starred in the Nickelodeon show Ned’s Declassified Guide to School Survival from 2004 to 2007
Bell expressed outrage on X (previously known as Twitter) after watching footage of the trio seeming to make light of his trauma during the TikTok live video
Drake Bell called out the Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide stars, ‘Ned’s Declassless…this is wild…laugh it up guys…laugh it up…’ he wrote on X (Pictured in New York In February 2019)
‘I am sorry. I know that that even when there wasn’t an intention or malice behind things people have done for me, I know that it has just helped me when people meet me where I am and recognize like, “Hey that was a gut punch, whether it was intentional or not, and, yeah, gut punches suck,”‘ she said.
After watching the docuseries, Werkheiser offered an apology on X Tuesday.
‘I watched Quiet on Set tonight and am horrified by the gravity of what Drake and others shared. Truly heartbroken over what my fellow actors went through. I can’t believe they weren’t protected. I’m sorry for compounding any hurt.’
Bell described Peck’s abuse of him, which reportedly began when he was 15 and working on The Amanda Show, as ‘the worst stuff somebody could do to a person.’
In the series, the actor and singer explained that his father had hired Peck, now 63, who was a dialogue coach at Nickelodeon, to coach his young son after his career began to take off.
Bell said the abuse began when he was 15 and working on The Amanda Show. His parents had hired dialogue coach Brian Peck, 63, to work with him after the young actor’s career began to take off. He said Peck abused him for six months
Bell described Brian Peck’s abuse of him as ‘the worst stuff somebody could do to a person’ while appearing on Quiet On Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV (Pictured in Burbank in April 2012)
In the docuseries, Bell’s father, Joe, accused Peck of driving a wedge between him and his son
He claimed the sexual abuse began during a casting trip that he was on with Peck at age 15, explaining that he was sleeping on a couch when he suddenly awoke to the coach ‘sexually assaulting him.’
‘I froze and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do or how to react,’ he recalled in the doc.
He described the molestation as ‘extensive,’ and recalled feeling ‘trapped’ – admitting that he now ‘often looks back at that time and wonders how in the world he survived.’
‘Brian and I became really close because we had a lot of the same interests, which looking back I think was probably a little calculated,’ he shared in the doc which debuted on Discovery March 17 and is now available for streaming on various platforms.
Bell’s father Joe told viewers that he felt like something was amiss pretty early on, but that Brian drove a wedge between him and his son.
‘I was always within eye distance of them… I was very attentive,’ he told the camera.
‘Unfortunately, I started seeing Brian start to just hang around Drake too much and it didn’t sit well with me.’
Joe said that Peck would walk into his son’s dressing room and ‘put his arm around his waist, put his hand up on his shoulder, or kind of run it down his arm.’
‘This would happen routinely,’ he added.
The young actor kept quiet about the abuse, but eventually ‘exploded’ and told his mother what had been happening to him.
‘I have no idea what provoked it. I have no idea what happened but I just screamed into the phone everything that had been happening to me,’ he said.
Bell rose to fame alongside Josh Peck on their hit sitcom Drake & Josh, which ran for four seasons between 2004 to 2007
The young actor kept quiet about the abuse, but eventually ‘exploded’ and told his mother what had been happening to him. ‘ I have no idea what happened but I just screamed into the phone everything that had been happening to me,’ he said
Peck was initially charged with 11 counts of child sex abuse, but reached a deal with prosecutors in 2004, and pleaded non-contest to for lewd or lascivious acts with a 14- or 15-year-old child and oral copulation with a minor under 16
Peck was initially charged with 11 counts of child sex abuse, but reached a deal with prosecutors in 2004, and pleaded non-contest to for lewd or lascivious acts with a 14- or 15-year-old child and oral copulation with a minor under 16.
He was sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.
That designation did not prevent him from being hired for voice work after his release on the Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
His last listed work on IMDB.com was 2015’s Freaks of Nature, a show centered around human, vampire and zombie teens trying to protect their town after an alien invasion.