Drake Bell is opening up about life after "Quiet on Set."
The former "Drake & Josh" star addressed the Investigation Discovery documentary series "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids' TV" (streaming on Discovery+ and Max) in an interview with E! News published Tuesday.
"It's an emotional roller coaster," Bell told E! News. "You keep something inside like that for so many years and it's like torture."
But everything changed with the release of the buzzy documentary, which included disturbing details from former child stars of a variety of abuses and toxic behavior they say they experienced on the sets of classic Nickelodeon children's TV shows, from "All That" and "The Amanda Show" to "Drake & Josh" and "Victorious."
"Oh my god, the world knows, and I didn't know how people were going to react," Bell said. "But it's been a lot of support and it's been nice."
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Bell, who starred in Nickelodeon's "The Amanda Show" from 1999 to 2002 and "Drake & Josh" as the titular character from 2004 to 2007, alleged in the third part of the docuseries that, as a minor, he faced "extensive" sexual abuse by Brian Peck, a dialogue coach working with the network at the time.
Peck, who is not related to Bell's Drake & Josh co-star Josh Peck, was arrested in August 2003 and convicted in 2004 on charges of lewd acts with a child that stemmed from a 2001 incident.
Why 'Quiet on Set' documentaryon Nickelodeon scandal exposes the high price of kids TV
Bell had not previously disclosed himself as the plaintiff in that case. However, he did previously appear on an episode of DearMedia's "Not Skinny But Not Fat" podcast in April where he discussed the aftermath of opening up about the sexual abuse he faced from Peck.
The actor also discussed the criticism he received after he was accused of sexual contact and grooming an underage fan. "I'd responded on some DMs and was incredibly irresponsible, and got myself into conversations that I shouldn’t have had, and I ended up finding out that I was talking to someone that I shouldn’t have been talking to, and it snowballed into these allegations that were not true, and it just turned into this big thing," Bell said of the 2021 case.
In the "Quiet on Set" documentary, Bell said he experienced a "slow decline" in his mental health and sobriety, adding that he was "absolutely destroyed" by "misinformation" that was spread about his child endangerment case.
"I started to spin out of control," he said. "If I had continued down that path, that could very likely be the end of my story."
Contributing; Naledi Ushe, Kelly Lawler
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