‘Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide’ Stars Apologize To Drake Bell For Joking About His Abuse

deadline.com:

Devon Werkheiser, Lindsey Shaw and Daniel Curtis Lee, the former stars of Ned’s Declassified School Survivor Guide, have apologized for making a sexual joke when asked about the Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV docuseries during a TikTok live.

The former stars were called out by Drake Bell and slammed online for making light of the abuse. Werkheiser said on the trio’s podcast Thursday that he was joking with Lee, and not talking about the documentary, which he claims he has not yet seen. “If you haven’t seen the clip, if you haven’t seen what’s going on, we were on a TikTok Live being asked to comment on the ‘Quiet on Set’ documentary, which we hadn’t seen, and a super s—t joke came out that was referenced at Daniel [Curtis Lee] and looked like I was talking about Drake [Bell],” Werkheiser said. “We f—ked up.

I get it. We hadn’t seen the doc and everyone was asking us for their for our opinions on it.” He went on to say that the group had “no clue” about the “magnitude” of abuse Bell suffered by the actions of former dialect coach Brian Peck. “Now we have watched it … I get it,” Werkheiser added. “If I had just watched — especially that third episode — and then watched us joking like that, I would be like, ‘Are they sociopaths?

Is something wrong with them?’” Werkheiser added, “I know it looks like I’m laughing at this and I f—king wasn’t, but I know what it looks like, and that Drake saw it … yeah,” Werkheiser clarified. “I just felt so f—king awful, knowing that Drake saw us in that context.” In the series, Bell said that Peck started molesting him in the early 2000s when he was 15 and working at Nickelodeon.