This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s spring editorial intern Henry Ryeder. Find him on Instagram at @henryryeder. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
Emotions are flying high following the release of ID’s gut-wrenching docuseries Quiet on Set. That program, which centers around the toxic and at times abusive workplace environment fostered by Nickelodeon impresario Dan Schneider, featured a surprise interview subject in its third episode.
Drake Bell, star of mid-aughts hit kids’ show Drake and Josh, appeared on Quiet on Set to publicly recount the sexual assault he suffered at the hands of Brian Peck, a dialogue coach with whom he worked on shows such as All That and The Amanda Show prior to his star turn in Drake and Josh.
That interview, and other tragic confessionals given by former child stars, helped amass a viewership of 16 million across cable networks since the series premiered on March 17. This makes Quiet on Set the most popular unscripted program since the launch of parent distributor Max last year.
The program’s popularity is due in no small part to its interview subject. Drake and Josh ran from 2004 to 2007 on Nickelodeon, averaging 3 million viewers per week and reaching top 10 status across all cable programs during its run. The series, starring Bell and former Amanda Show co-star Josh Peck as an Odd Couple-like set of step-brothers, resonated with a generation of young people thanks to its quirky antics, likable leads, and menacing step-sister character Megan, played by Miranda Cosgrove.
Cosgrove would go on to star in iCarly in 2007, right on the heels of Drake & Josh’s finale. Though iCarly would also benefit from major ratings success in its infancy, the show would slowly shed viewership over its course. This wasn’t directly caused by shoddy writing, inappropriate behavior, or justice reaching creator Dan Schneider (though all would be terrifically sound reasons), but rather by phenomena outside of Nickelodeon’s control. By 2012, connected television usage had already fallen below tablet usage by the majority of American children aged 6-12 years, and was on track to fall below phone usage. In households, cable subscriptions had already peaked two years earlier, slowly collapsing under the might of streaming.
The trickle-down effect from cord-cutting would reach Schneider’s empire before any consequences for his well-documented actions would. Schneider’s subsequent television programs suffered from successive waves of ratings floundering. Victorious spin-off Sam & Cat, Henry Danger, and Schneider’s final official Nickelodeon program Game Shakers would respectively see a steady decline in viewership. Schneider’s troubles were compounded by seismic cultural shifts in Hollywood. Following Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s investigative report on Harvey Weinstein in 2017, understandings of workplace conduct in entertainment became more heavily scrutinized by the general public. In a feat of miraculous timing, Nickelodeon severed its relationship with Schneider in 2018.
The subsequent years have not been kind to Schneider’s reputation. A New York Times interview in 2021 reported that Nickelodeon parent company ViacomCBS found evidence of Schneider verbally abusing his colleagues. Jennette McCurdy’s 2022 memoir references an unnamed “Creator” she worked for early on in her career as a child star who conducted themselves inappropriately on set, asking McCurdy to massage them, photographing them in a bikini, and pressuring her to consume alcohol underage. Though Dan Schneider is unnamed in the memoir, it’s difficult to assume the Creator is anyone but Schneider. During her career as a child actor, McCurdy only starred as a series regular in Schneider-created programming.
The Quiet on Set documentary series further describes the predatory environment that trailed Schneider’s sets. Aside from other conduct by Schneider such as workplace sexual harassment, bullying, and threatening, Schneider allowed child sexual predators to have positions on sets with child actors. In one of the series’s most disturbing sequences, Drake Bell describes the abuse he suffered at the hands of “dialogue coach” Brian Peck. Brian Peck was employed on the sets of All That, a Schneider-produced Nickelodeon series that ran from 1994 to 2005, and The Amanda Show, another Schneider venture starring Amanda Bynes that ran from 1999 to 2002. It was on The Amanda Show that Drake Bell became acquainted with Peck.
The process of grooming and abuse is heavily detailed in Bell’s interview, and it would be futile to try to express Bell’s account in a few sentences on a page. However, Bell’s confession has led to fallout beyond the reaches of his abuser Brian Peck and former boss Dan Schneider.
In the years since Drake & Josh, the former heartthrob Bell and former awkward funnyman Josh Peck (no relation to Brian Peck) have had divergent career experiences. While Bell’s publicly suffered substance abuse and even faced child endangerment accusations himself, Peck has had a relatively fruitful Hollywood career. Just last year, Peck had a supporting role in 2023’s Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, Oppenheimer. Yet it hasn’t all been rosy for Peck as far as public image goes. Last year, Peck recounted on his podcast Good Guys that Jennette McCurdy had been booked as one of their first podcast guests in an episode that never aired (per McCurdy’s request.) In the episode of his podcast describing McCurdy’s subsequent silent treatment, Peck explained, “She owes us.”
In the context of McCurdy’s memoir, a highly detailed and emotionally charged account of child stardom, and Peck’s relative silence regarding the rumors and accusations surrounding his former employers Nickelodeon and Dan Schneider, this flippant remark made many angry. About a year prior to the McCurdy incident, Peck was also questioned by BFF podcast host Dave Portnoy about Peck’s relationship to David Dobrik. Dobirk is a popular vlogger who has recently become known for putting his team in danger and has promoted another creator who was accused of sexual assault on his channel numerous times. Rather than give the slightest of lip service to Dobrik and his team’s survivors, Peck simply affirmed that the two were friends.
In the days following the Quiet on Set interview with Drake Bell, Peck’s popular TikTok page was swarmed with commenters pleading for a response by Josh Peck on Drake Bell. After a few days, Bell released a video of his own, telling his fans that Peck had indeed reached out to him and imploring people to “take it a little easy on him.” A day after Bell’s video response, Peck posted an official statement on Instagram. “I took a few days to process [the Quiet on Set documentary]… Children should be protected. Reliving this publicly is incredibly difficult, but I hope it can bring healing…as well as necessary change to our industry.”
While this is an undoubtedly tidy, PR-approved response, Peck could do so much more. As one of the most visible and relevant former child stars of the Nickelodeon era, Peck could publicly stand in solidarity behind McCurdy and others such as Alexa Nikolas, calling for more protection for child actors as well as justice for those wronged by Dan Schneider and Brian Peck. The only thing that could stand in Peck’s way would be a house of cards of celebrities whose reputations are inextricably linked to high-profile child predators. But hey… that’s Hollywood.
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