2024-03-20 07:51:05
The audiovisual industry is a place that can sometimes be very hostile. Especially for those without professional experience and, above all, for minors. There are many cases of sexual abuse and harassment that numerous young people have suffered, and now a new docuseries aims to tell the truth regarding some of these events.
It is called Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, it premiered on March 17 on the Investigation Discovery television channel and is available for streaming through Max in the US, but on no Spanish platform.
One of the testimonies that is collected is that of Drake Bell, whom many met in the teenage comedy Drake & Josh. Before starring in this sitcom alongside Josh Peck, young Drake was part of the cast of The Amanda Show, another Nickelodeon series. There he met Brian Peck (he has no family relationship with Josh Peck) and his nightmare began.
That man worked for the television channel as a dialogue coach, and was thus able to establish contact with Bell. The actor, now 37, remembers with horror what he suffered as a teenager: Why don’t you think of the worst thing someone can do to another person as sexual abuse? That will answer your questions. “I don’t know how to describe it, it was not an isolated case.”
The case of Drake Bell
The interpreter was that anonymous teenager who denounced Brian Peck in 2003 and who led him to serve a 16-month prison sentence. But at first, Bell did not suspect the abuser’s true nature. They quickly connected over their mutual interests, although he now thinks it was all calculated. On the other hand, Joe Bell, his father, became suspicious because the two spent a lot of time together.
Joe didn’t understand that Brian accompanied his son almost all the time, even in the locker room. Or that he touched her arm more than necessary when he explained a phrase of the dialogue to her. He did not hesitate to convey his concerns to the rest of the team, but the response he received from a production company was not what he expected. “She told me, ‘I don’t know if you know this or not, but Brian is gay. Maybe you’re homophobic and don’t understand that he’s a sensitive, touchy-feely man.’ I had to accept what she said, but I still didn’t see it as normal, “So I told more people on set. They ostracized me, so I backed out.”
Things got worse
After Drake Bell got his own series, Drake & Josh, his relationship with his father fractured. Brian Peck convinced the young man that Joe, his manager at the time, wanted to take advantage of him and keep the money. “Coming from someone like him, I had to believe him because of the years he had been in the business, he must have known more than us,” explains the actor in the docuseries.
The relationship between Drake’s parents, now divorced, also deteriorated. Brian convinced the mother to let Joe stop being the manager. Later, he got her to let her son stay the night at her house so she might take him to the castings.
“I was sleeping on the couch like always, and I woke up. I opened my eyes and there he was, sexually abusing me. I froze and was completely shocked, I had no idea what to do or how to react. I also didn’t know how to get out. of that situation,” recalls Bell, who did not feel able to call his mother and did not have a car or license to leave, because he was 15 years old at the time.
The actor did not know how to escape or give up going to his abuser’s house more times, because he would not be able to answer the questions they would ask him. In addition, Brian was remorseful and promised that it would not happen once more. Later, she managed to convince his mother to sleep with him more times, with the excuse of taking him to more auditions. “And then he got worse, and worse, and more. He was trapped. He had no way out. The abuse was widespread and brutal,” Drake laments.
The end of the nightmare came when Bell began a relationship. His girlfriend’s mother became suspicious of Brian and encouraged the young man to open up regarding what he had experienced. He subsequently informed his own mother and the police, beginning the police investigation. “I had to be very detailed regarding everything he did to me and tell it to two strangers. The worst was when they asked me to call Brian to get him to confess what he had done,” the interpreter explained.
Brian Peck was arrested in 2003 and convicted of child abuse a year later. He pleaded no contest to charges of performing lewd acts with a 14 or 15-year-old, and having oral sex with a minor under 16. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison and registered as a sex offender.
Dónde ver ‘Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV’
The documentary premiered on the Investigation Discovery television channel and has become part of the streaming catalog of the Max platform, which in the US has already replaced HBO Max following the latest changes resulting from the consolidation of Warner Bros. Discovery.
However, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV is not available on the current HBO Max Spain.
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