Drake Bell Talks Using Music to Heal From Child Acting Trauma: “I Tell My Story Through My Art

As he releases his latest music album, Non-Stop Flight, Drake Bell says his fans need to look to his music and not just his childhood trauma as recounted in last year’s Investigation Discovery’s docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, to understand the former Drake and Josh star.

“I tell my story through my art, and the documentary is one way of seeing my story. But if you really want to know what’s going on in my mind, my heart and my thoughts, to get down to the nitty gritty, you should check out my record and what I’m doing artistically, because that’s a much more pure reflection of what’s gone on in my life and my experiences,” Bells tells The Hollywood Reporter. The Quiet on Set docuseries had Bell facing his past and present in the third episode where he graphically recounted how he was allegedly groomed and suffered alleged sexual abuse at the hands of Brian Peck.

In 2003, Peck was accused of molesting a child. He was subsequently convicted of a lewd act against a child and oral copulation of a person under 16 and spent 16 months in prison. One year later, Bell is working hard to get past that media attention by talking about his music, movies and art.

He doesn’t regret doing the Quiet on Set documentary. “It’s definitely a weight lifted. I definitely walk lighter,” Bell said. But answering endless media queries about his childhood trauma has been emotionally draining in itself.

“I’m a little exhausted doing interviews and rehashing, answering the same questions that are already out there,” he insisted. Bell added he welcomes meeting people, and especially his fans, at airports, concerts, meet and greets, and listening as they share their own experiences of childhood trauma and discover as he did during his own recovery that they aren’t alone as they look to heal.

“Sharing my experience with other people who’ve had similar experiences and have had the opportunity to talk about that with me, no, that would never get exhausting,” he added. But Non-Stop Flight, his sixth music album with 35 tracks, is where Bell really wants to connect with his fans, and where he reveals what’s really in his heart and mind and where he can potentially no longer be pinned down by a past that includes being sexually abused and exploited on a Nickelodeon kids TV set.

In one of the Non-Stop Flight tracks, “Hollywouldn’t,” the punk vibe lyrics point to someone being done with Hollywood and its “boulevard of broken dreams” and wanting to leave, but his girlfriend wants to stay. Bell recounted a young Dutch woman posting to Instagram an impressive folk song cover of “Hollywouldn’t,” and then flying to Bakersfield, California to meet him at one of his concerts.

“I’m in the middle of nowhere in California, and this girl flies out and is able to meet me at a meet-and-greet and thank me and we have this great moment,” he remembered. Here Bell credits social media for allowing young artists to get beyond the need to get an agent in Hollywood and feed the parking meter to complete endless rounds of auditions to get somewhere in showbiz.

“Kids are putting out content and becoming MrBeast. It’s just a whole different world,” he argued. And not one to keep a journal, Bell says writing music and getting in a studio to produce songs and albums has allowed him to process his childhood trauma.

Songwriting in Non-Stop Flight, and going back to his debut 2005 album Telegraph, offered Bell a way to discuss where his life was, where it had taken him, where he fell and had to get back up to survive, and where he was most frustrated, including with Hollywood success. “I talk about losing my family, substance abuse and losing my mind. There’s so much in there and its great my fans are now able to read the lyrics and go, wow, I really know what he’s talking about now and I can really connect with it,” he said.

As a songwriter, Bell left bread crumbs in his first albums to show his fans where he was in his life, warts and all, but couldn’t come out and directly say why. “They’re going back to my old albums and going, oh my gosh, now we know what he’s talking about, he’s been screaming from the mountain top since day one. We just had no idea that this is what the songs were about,” he explains of fans combing through his lyrics to see the fallout from Brian Peck’s abuse.

Non-Stop Flight has also allowed naysayers to see perhaps for the first time why Bell made mistakes in his life and was raked over the coals for doing so. “In my life, throughout my career and in the public eye, I’ve been lumped in with another young actor that due to an indulgent lifestyle and getting too much at once, at too young an age, made all of the missteps and mistakes that commonly come along with that upbringing,” Bell said.

“But now the curtain is being pulled back and it’s being revealed that there was a lot more darkness and trauma and turmoil that I was dealing with on the inside, and because of the circumstances I was never able to reveal,” he adds. Going forward, Bell is enjoying a career resurgence, not least in Mexico where his fanbase is growing and he’s looking to do more work.

“There’s everything out there. I have the ability to make films if I want to. They have amazing production companies, amazing music producers that are becoming bigger and bigger as Latin music takes over,” he said. Mexico, where Bell has a romcom movie in the works, has also allowed him to be more free creatively.

“I can be an artist without being completely pigeon-holed, like in the United States, where I feel sometimes your fans are only with you if they dig your last record and with the next record your fans are going, alright, this is your next test. Are we coming with you, or are we moving on?” he insisted.

Which gets Bell back to Non-Stop Flight, an album that he describes as a musical journey about his life as seen from 30,000 square feet. “This album starts with wanting to escape, wanting to get away from Hollywood, wherever you are at this moment, and then finding out wherever you go, you’re still there. Your problems come with you. Then, having love, having family and then losing love and then losing yourself, and then discovering yourself and finally coming in for the landing, where there’s hope for the future,” Bell added.