Kids TV star admits he's ‘struggling to pay rent' after being underpaid for huge hit shows

Scottish Sun

21-07-2025

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DRAKE Bell has admitted he's "struggling to pay rent" after being underpaid for his huge hit shows.
Kids TV star Drake, 39, opened up about his financial struggles in a new interview, claiming his work with Nickelodeon hasn't provided the long-term security many people assume.
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Drake Bell has admitted he's "struggling to pay rent" after being underpaid for his huge hit shows
Credit: Getty
The actor shot to fame on The Amanda Show and later became a household name thanks to Drake & Josh, which ran for three years and remains hugely popular in reruns.
But despite the show's lasting success, Drake says he's far from wealthy - and is still worried about how to pay the bills.
Appearing on The Unplanned Podcast, he said public assumptions about his wealth couldn't be further from the truth.
He said: 'That's the perception of the world, it's always been this way. It's like, you know, 'Oh, you made a Folgers Coffee commercial. You must live in a mansion in Hollywood. Like, I saw you on TV. You're rich.'
'That's far from the case. And especially, which is the bummer for most of us on Nickelodeon, we don't get residuals for our shows.'
Drake said that unlike the contracts seen by many adult stars, his Nickelodeon deals involved one-off payments.
This means he doesn't earn anything when his shows air today - even as they continue to reach new audiences via streaming and syndication.
He said: "If I had a fair contract, I'd be seeing money from that work now."
He pointed to the cast of Friends as an example of how different things could've looked.
Drake added: 'The Friends cast at the peak was making a million dollars an episode. You make 13 episodes that year, you make $13,000,000. You make 20 episodes that year, you make $20,000,000, right?
Drake Bell tells Today Show kept his 'child sex abuse a secret' because he was afraid of the reaction
'But right now, each cast member of Friends just in syndication alone is making over $20,000,000 a year, and they're not filming a show every week.
"They're not going to work, but they're playing their show and they're using their likeness and they're doing all this, so they get paid for it.'
Even as his own show lands in the Netflix top 10, Drake says he's figuring out how to cover rent, continuing: 'Netflix just bought it, it's top 10 on Netflix, and I gotta figure out how to pay my rent this month."
'And some fat cat with a cigar is just sitting up at the top of Viacom just going [chuckles]. What do you call it? It's just like getting high on child labor.'
He added that many people don't realise how little control young performers have behind the scenes: 'People don't understand how the business works, the business side of this. They just see what the perception is on Instagram and social media and all the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood.
'We're putting in all of this work. This corporation is making billions with a 'B' off of us, and we're being compensated for the week of work, cool, but that's it.
'And forever, in perpetuity, it literally says in the contract, across universes and galaxies and planets.'
Drake also alleged that he experienced sexual abuse while working on set, saying the challenges he's faced as an adult are the result of deep-rooted issues within the industry.
He said: 'It's a lot of evil, corrupt people. That's the only thing, that is the answer. There's no other answer.
'Do everything that they do to us mentally and emotionally, and then throw us to the wolves. And we're like, okay, cool. I got rent this month. There are three channels doing marathons.'
Drake's finances aren't the only part of his past under scrutiny.
In 2021, he was sentenced to two years' probation and 200 hours of community service after pleading guilty to child endangerment involving a teenage fan.
The case involved a girl who met Drake online when she was 12 and later attended one of his shows in Ohio at 15.
In court, she accused him of grooming her from an early age and of sexually abusing her.
However, Drake wasn't charged with any sexual offences.
Speaking about the case last year, he denied any abuse and said he only pleaded guilty because he was in no position to fight a legal battle.
'I responded on some DMs and was incredibly irresponsible and got myself into conversations that I shouldn't have had,'
He said on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast: "I responded on some DMs and was incredibly irresponsible and got myself into conversations that I shouldn't have had.
'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.'
Drake said he pleaded guilty because he had just become a father and couldn't afford a drawn-out trial.
He claimed: '[I] ended up pleading guilty, because financially I was just devastated, and I had just had a son and I didn't want to put my family through all of this anymore.
'I ended up going through the process the way that I did. Very regretful.'
He said he wasn't aware of the girl's age when they first interacted online, and once he found out, he claims he ended communication.
'I was doing everything I could to kind of keep my distance,' he said.
Drake also insisted that some of the most serious claims were investigated and found to be untrue.
He said: 'A lot of the things she said about sending inappropriate pictures and things like this, it was able to be investigated and show that none of that existed.'
Still, he admitted fault for having the conversations in the first place, saying: 'I did have those conversations and I took responsibility for that.'
Reflecting on his past decisions, Drake said: 'There's just so much that I've had to deal with, and through that, like I said, not having the tools or not knowing how to process things, I made a lot of decisions in my life that I shouldn't have made and hurt a lot of people.
'But now, where I am in my life now, I think that I'm finally at a place where I can process and deal with this through therapy that I've been through and actively going through, unearthing all of these things and being able to face them head on for really the first time in my life.'
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He became a household name thanks to Drake & Josh, which ran for three years and remains hugely popular in reruns
Credit: Alamy
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Josh Peck (left) and Drake Bell (dressed as Santa) on the set of the film Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh
Credit: Nickleodeon
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Despite the show's lasting success, Drake says he's far from wealthy
Credit: Getty