Drake Bell claims Nickelodeon doesn't pay residuals to child stars
Bell, 39, claimed he and co-star Josh Peck never received residuals for their show, which ran for three years on the kid-focused network before its final episode aired in 2007.
The actor, who previously revealed alleged abuse he suffered while working for Nickelodeon, addressed what he said was a misconception in the entertainment world.
"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. I saw you on TV, you're rich,'" Bell said during an appearance on "The Unplanned Podcast."
"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."
Bell noted that most networks pay actors residuals for work used after its initial run, but said Nickelodeon only offers a one-time payment to actors.
Host Matt Howard wondered if the network was attempting to take advantage of stars due to their age, to which Bell said, "Keep going. Keep trying to figure it out."
"It's a lot of evil, corrupt people... that is the answer," Bell said. "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.'"
The sitcom, which also received TV films in addition to video games and books, is still popular with audiences, Bell said.
"There are three channels doing 'Drake & Josh' marathons. Netflix just bought it, it's top 10 on Netflix, and I gotta figure out how to pay my rent this month," Bell said. "And some fat cat with a cigar is just sitting up at the top of Viacom... It's just like getting high on child labor."
He continued, "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.
"If Elon [Musk] gets us to Mars and they show 'Drake & Josh,' it's impossible for me to get paid for it."
Nickelodeon representatives did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
The documentary "Quiet on Set" premiered in March 2024, covering the bulk of Dan Schneider's time at Nickelodeon. As a showrunner, Schneider was alleged to have run a toxic workplace, discriminated against female writers on staff and made requests for massages from employees on set.
The most alarming claim from the documentary came from Bell, who detailed sexual abuse allegations against Brian Peck, an actor and dialogue coach hired by Nickelodeon.
Bell recalled the day the relationship went from uncomfortable to full-blown assault and abuse.
"I was sleeping on the couch where I would usually sleep, and I woke up to him… I opened my eyes, I woke up and he was sexually assaulting me. And I froze and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do or how to react," Bell said. "And I had no idea how to get out of the situation… What do I do, call my mom, 'Hey, can you come pick me up? This just happened, I'll sit here and wait.' I had no car, I didn't drive. I was 15 at this time."
He continued, "The abuse was extensive. And it got pretty brutal, pretty brutal. I don't know, I really don't know how to elaborate on that on camera really."
When asked by a producer what he would feel comfortable talking about, Bell said, "Why don't you do this, why don't you think of the worst stuff that someone can do to somebody as a sexual assault and that'll answer your question. I don't know how else to put it. It was not a one-time thing."
Nickelodeon issued a statement to Fox News Digital regarding the alleged behaviors on past production sets.
"Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct," the statement said. "Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crews, but of all children, and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNET
6 minutes ago
- CNET
Bring Spider-Man All the Way Home With 20% Off This Iconic Lego Set
I'm not going to get into who the best Spider-Man is and why it is Andrew Garfield. But if there's one thing all Marvel fans can agree on it's that the Statue of Liberty showdown in No Way Home is the most iconic crossover in the MCU so far. And now, thanks to Lego, you can re-create the exact scene at home, at a discount. Amazon is currently offering the Lego Marvel Spider-Man Final Battle set for $88, which is 20% off its regular price. Considering how we don't see Marvel-themed Lego sets go on sale that often, this one's a rare find and might not be around for long. The set re-creating the final battle from No Way Home includes all three Spider-Men, nine total minifigs and nearly a thousand pieces. You'll have Tobey, Andrew, Tom, Doctor Strange, MJ (of course), Ned, Electro, Green Goblin and Doc Ock. There's another hidden surprise -- lifting off the roof reveals Sandman's giant hand. Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money. Of course, what's a Spidey without its webs? This set comes with soft web pieces to trap the bad guys, along with three clear supports that let you pose characters in the air. There's even a flip-open section at the back that reveals a portal. It's recommended for ages 10 and older but I won't judge if you're a full-grown adult trying to get your hands on it before the kids do -- because, same. Why this deal matters Lego sets offer a great way to relive your favorite movie moments, and this one hits especially hard for Marvel fans. It's more than a toy, and at 20% off, it's a great excuse to bring this nostalgia-evoking collectible home without paying full price.
Forbes
7 minutes ago
- Forbes
AI Boom Fuels San Francisco Party Scene As People Seek Connection
Secret salons, oyster happy hours, coffee raves--San Francisco is back and basking in idyllic weather as rent increases jump to the highest in the nation. Streets are teeming with people racing to events, despite tech season being weeks away, when conferences like Dreamforce, Disrupt, TedAI and SF Tech Week take over the city. Much of the frenzy is being attributed to the AI gold rush with people returning to town to get a piece of the action, so over the past week I popped into several happenings to hear what everyone is talking about. Finding your tribe At AGI House, a sprawling Hillsborough mansion just outside of San Francisco, known for hosting tech celebrities like Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Grimes, dozens gathered for a garden gala featuring talks with industry luminaries OpenAI's chief strategy officer Jason Kwon and former OpenAI interim CEO Emmett Shear. It was as insider as it gets with a pulsing DJ set by Twitch cofounder Justin Kan, meticulously curated by AGI House founder Rocky Yu and Icons podcaster Melanie Uno. In the mix was Poshmark cofounder Manish Chandra who shared with me his views on the AI transformation. I asked, what will people do with their lives as AI frees up time, and more importantly how will they pay for it. He replied, 'I feel like we're moving to more and more abundance, even though the path to abundance always feels a little uncertain and dark." "When the dot com boom was crashing, it was impossible to find a job. Highway 101 was emptier than Covid. There were see-through buildings, literally no jobs, and people were throwing in the towel.' Trying times, he recalled. "I remember it from a personal perspective, because I had young kids and had to figure out how to survive.' He expressed how hard times bring out things that can transform you, whether you discover superpowers or connect with new people. 'Human connections deepen when times are tough,' he said. 'When times are good, people just kind of ignore each other.' He also said there have been far crazier boom and bust cycles that have come before, with companies giving away BMWs and other outrageous perks to attract engineers. 'In the nineties, technology was changing so fast, it felt like everything you were doing was going to become obsolete, literally every day," he said. 'Every 10 years, we predict the demise of Silicon Valley, and we feel like whatever the technology is coming is dooming humanity, and is more severe than last time. Yet here we all are thriving, sitting here this lovely evening.' Emmett Shear, now cofounder of Andreessen-backed AI alignment lab, Softmax, sat down with me to discuss how people can best keep their head straight during these times. He explained that in the seventies there was a seminal work authored by Alvin Toffler, called Future Shock, that explored the psychological disorientation that can occur as a result of rapid technological change. 'This feeling of overwhelm, that if things keep changing, I can't learn fast enough to keep up with the system," he said. "But the way you keep up is actually by giving up on trying to understand everything at that level of detail.' He then shared his barbell strategy for surviving the next five years. 'In a high variance environment where things can change a lot in unexpected ways, you should just YOLO big things that might work, because even if you fail, your tried-and-true plan could also fail. So there's no point playing it safe, might as well be ambitious,' he advised. 'On the other hand, as things get riskier, you'll need to build up safety and reliability support to counterbalance.' He said hunter-gatherers lived in the same situation we're wandering into, a world of forces more powerful than themselves and beyond their control. Not only was it spiritually, emotionally and intellectually beneficial to be in a tight community, but also economically sound. When you store meat from the hunt in the bellies of friends, they'll be around to help when you find yourself in a tough spot. Futureproofing AI bets Back in San Francisco, at a Michelin starred restaurant where the meal was served community style making dining optional, AI unicorn Honeybook gathered the press to discuss how AI is birthing a new breed of one person startups and solopreneurs. It was here I had a chance to talk with Jeff Crowe, managing partner of Norwest Venture Partners, who told me the story of a 20-year old founder that landed seed funding to create text-to-sheets, text-to-deck apps right before ChatGPT made it a feature. This led to the question, how can VCs futureproof bets to prevent obsolescense in the age of AI. He said the first thing to look at is product. If it's a thin wrapper around a core, it's hard to futureproof as the LLMs eat their way further into the application layer. 'It's how venture capital looked at personal software in the nineties and said what's the differentiation if Microsoft moves into the space. Thirty-plus years later, it's a similar phenomenon in AI products, where OpenAI, Anthropic and others keep adding functionality." As far as defensible moats, he looks for product capabilities not easily disruptable like those with domain-specific data, integration with large enterprise systems, and bespoke distribution tied to supply chain. If it's a product that's been around longer, he looks for how fast it's pivoting to AI, driving into core functionality as well as operations including development, customer support, sales, marketing, HR and finance. Because if operations aren't futureproofed, competitors can gain a superior cost structure and become more capital efficient and profitable. He looks to see whether customers are adapting because some are going to get accelerated, and others obliterated, with risks that have nothing to do with the core business. Lastly, he looks for a culture that's nimble and can move exceptionally quickly. A fan of young talent, Crowe believes hiring AI-natives is the best way to transform an organization, because their rate of change is less than a worker whose baseline is pre-AI. Embracing AI workers Across town, Initialized Capital was hosting its own press dinner, introducing their portfolio of agentic startups deploying digital workers. Runway cofounder Siqi Chen told me from the moment he launched his startup in 2020, he knew they'd never have more than 100 people, because they had early access to GPT-3 and knew they could scale faster with AI, than headcount. In contrast to Crowe's hiring strategy, Chen said, Runway is hiring only senior talent. 'The profile of how we hire is quite different today than it was even three or four years ago. It's staff or principal level only at this point, because junior stuff can basically be done by LLMs today." 'We're seeing non-technical people contribute on a technical level like never before-- tagging a robot to write the code for a bug--that's just magic," he said. Runway uses bots for everything, from qualifying leads to reviewing documents. One of Initialized other portco commented that they deployed AI in Slack for IT support under the name of Paul, not AI Paul. A bit head-spinning to think you can be chatting with an AI colleague and not know it, even if they are funny. Initialized Capital's managing partner Brett Gibson said it's the natural progression of where we're heading. I asked him whether this was the end of the app economy. He replied, 'Software is going to trend towards being generatable. There are going to be a lot of apps you still want a relationship with for a variety of reasons, because they have other people on them and you're collaborating, or perhaps the AI itself has a personality you want to interact with. It's not going away, it's just going to have to adapt.' And what about humans, I asked, what's next for humans? 'The one thing that makes me very hopeful is that if there's anything AI is very good at, it's personalized education. And so hopefully, that will be the path for those feeling left out. People should follow whatever they're interested in and curious about because a high agency person using high leverage tools are going to do something cool and that's valuable," he said. AI gets the last word Back at AGI House, hanging out with hashtag inventor Chris Messina, I asked what advice he would give Gen Alpha on where to focus their energies, considering how pandemic losers have become AI winners, with ballet dancers, hair stylists and bartenders the few trades AI can't replace. 'VCs are over, SAS is over, everything that's been going on for the last 10 or 15 years kind of doesn't really make sense anymore,' he replied. 'If you really want to invest in the future, it's about having a perspective, being able to bring people into that and creating movements.' Echoing what Chen said: "There's only one Mr. Beast--and so if you develop relationship as a brand, that becomes sustainable value because AI cannot replace brand. Or can it? ChatGPT, may have no defensible moat as an AI assistant, but as a cultural icon with an estimated 1 billion followers, it remains pretty much untouchable. Just like the city from which it came.
Washington Post
7 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Deaf actors take on a Tony-winning musical — and deepen its meaning
The emotional climax of 'A Strange Loop,' now playing through Aug. 10 at Atlas Performing Arts Center, unfolds in a fierce and vulnerable silence. Usher, the narrator (played by Gabriel Silva), is confronting his father (Wade Green) about a lifelong pileup of misunderstandings and resentments. Audience members can either read the heated dialogue in captions projected on the set or, if they understand American Sign Language, watch the actors' impassioned gestures. The musical by Michael R. Jackson, which played a pre-Broadway tryout at Woolly Mammoth before transferring to Broadway and winning the Tony for best musical in 2022, is built around a meta conceit: Usher is a musical theater writer trying to write a musical about a musical theater writer trying to write a musical, and so on. Among Usher's biggest challenges is struggling to feel seen and supported, especially by his parents. As he expresses in the opening number, Usher wants to write himself into a musical to show people what it's like to 'travel the world in a fat, Black, queer body.' In this version, which marks a return for the musical to D.C., Usher also happens to be deaf. The co-production between the D.C.-based company Visionaries of the Creative Arts (VOCA) and Deaf Austin Theater (DAT) — which will next play the Long Center in Austin from Aug. 28 through Sept. 14 — features an ensemble of deaf, hard of hearing and hearing performers. Tyler 'T' Lang plays the voice of Usher, often joining Silva to speak and sing the character's lines, while the constellation of six thoughts that plague Usher, and variously embody his parents and others in his orbit, communicate with a mix of vocal and sign language. 'There is this preconceived notion that if a person is deaf, their entire world is silent. This is not true at all,' the production's director, Alexandria Wailes, wrote over email. 'Internal thoughts can be incredibly loud at times,' as demonstrated by Usher's intrusive menagerie of doubts. 'A Strange Loop,' which won the Pulitzer for Drama in 2020, presents an unflinching look at what life is like for someone like Usher. There's a song about cruising for sex on Grindr and facing ridicule for not being fit, White and well-endowed. And another with a gospel-style chorus suggesting that 'AIDS is God's punishment' for Black gay men. The show highlights the experiences of marginalized people with tender and provocative wit, which made it an ideal fit for both theater companies. 'You can tell the playwright really bared their soul onstage — that's what inspired me,' recalled DAT artistic director Brian Cheslik of seeing the Broadway production. Given the show's focus on Black characters, to produce it he sought to partner with VOCA, which was founded in 2019 with a mission to serve deaf artists and audiences of color. The collaboration also allowed the relatively young companies (DAT was also founded just before the pandemic) to pool their resources and present the show in both of their home cities. The staging at Atlas is relatively modest but entails a complex range of technical cues, including video projections, a la 'Hollywood Squares,' of characters who beam in to pester Usher (whether in vocal or sign language), captions timed to every line and the audio needs of an onstage band. (A glitch during the second performance resulted in a brief pause, a bit of bustling around backstage and enthusiastic applause when the action restarted.) 'I think hearing people have the misconception of deaf culture. They have no idea about how we live, how we communicate or even how we think — or everything we have to navigate just to survive,' VOCA artistic director Michelle Banks said. 'I really want audiences to see and understand that. 'A Strange Loop' takes us down all those different rabbit holes.' (Both Cheslik and Banks communicated through an interpreter in a Zoom interview.) Jackson, the author, voiced his support for the production through a statement shared with the companies and posted on the show's website, saying, 'I believe these two theaters will crack the piece open even further in a unique way that only they can do.' The production's multifaceted means of communication — spoken dialogue and music, ASL and closed captioning, often used simultaneously — add a compelling dimension to the show's themes. Usher's effort to tell his own story is expressed not only through Jackson's script and music but through physical movement that captures something beyond what's on the page: signs for words such as 'living,' 'torn,' 'hungry' and 'freedom' that get at Usher's feelings behind the language. Usher's desire to carve out a place for himself in the theater industry — beyond working as an usher at 'The Lion King' — resonates with the deaf companies as well. Only a few productions featuring deaf artists have come to Broadway over the past 25 years, including 'Spring Awakening' (in 2015) and 'Big River' (2003), both produced by L.A.'s Deaf West Theatre. (The company is reportedly at work on a musical adaptation of the Oscar-winning film 'Coda.') Those productions also combined deaf and hearing actors with a mix of spoken and sign language, as did a 2022 production of 'The Music Man' at Olney Theatre Center. 'We as deaf artists are constantly struggling to get jobs,' Cheslik said. 'Theaters are not willing to be open-minded to casting deaf actors in any type of show.' The collaborators hope that 'A Strange Loop' in particular, with its focus on an artist trying to share his own experience, will resonate with their companies' missions as well as with audiences. Wailes said, 'I hope folks leave with a deeper appreciation for how much courage it takes to embrace who you are and live your life fearlessly.'
