Drake Bell says Rider Strong and Will Friedle 'check in on me' after apologizing for supporting his abuser

Earlier this year, Drake Bell said that none of the dozens of people who wrote letters of support for the man who sexually abused him as a teenager had privately apologized to him. Nine months later, that's no longer the case.

On Thursday's episode of The Sarah Fraser Show, the Drake & Josh star confirmed that he heard from Boy Meets World actors Will Friedle and Rider Strong after going public about the abuse he survived in the bombshell docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, and they've been a source of support.

"Will reached out, that was really sweet," Bell said. "Rider reached out, he was very apologetic and sweet. We had a really long, like two-hour conversation, and they check in on me and everything."

Related: Drake Bell told mom about abuse because he feared Brian Peck was hurting more kids

Representatives for Friedle and Strong didn't immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for comment.

In Quiet on Set, which Investigation Discovery released in March, Bell detailed the abuse repeatedly perpetrated against him by Brian Peck, who worked as a dialogue coach on Nickelodeon's The Amanda Show while Bell was a cast member. Bell revealed in the docuseries that he was the anonymous teen whose testimony against Peck led to his 2003 arrest, subsequent conviction, and 16-month prison sentence.

During Peck's trial, he received letters of support from 41 people, including Friedle and Strong, both of whom worked with Peck on Boy Meets World. In a March episode of The Sarah Fraser Show, Bell said that he hadn't "gotten an apology, or a sorry, from anybody that had written letters, or was involved in supporting him at all." He also said on Thursday's episode of the podcast that he didn't know about the letters of support until Quiet on Set.

Friedle said in June that he didn't know who Bell was during Peck's trial, but when he eventually saw Bell, then 17, "walk into the courtroom, [I'm] like, Okay, I've been lied to. Automatically, I know this." Bell also previously said he made up with Strong shortly after the premiere of Quiet on Set, writing on social media, "We are all healing together. I have nothing but love and forgiveness for him."

Alan Thicke also wrote a letter of support after working with Peck on Growing Pains. Though Thicke died in 2016, Fraser asked if his son Robin Thicke, the singer, offered any words of solace after judging Bell on the recent season of The Masked Singer.

Related: Drake Bell, All That stars defend parents of child actors amid Quiet on Set allegations: 'They’re just learning along with us'

"I don't think he even connected the dots or anything like that," Bell said, reasoning that "he has nothing to do with it."

Others who knew and worked with Bell as a child have also expressed remorse for writing letters on behalf of Peck and recommitted their support for Bell. Richard and Beth Correll, who directed several episodes of Drake & Josh, wrote in a March statement that they "extend our deepest apologies to Drake Bell and his family, and we deeply regret our decision many years ago to request leniency for someone who we later learned had committed a horrible crime and caused so much pain and trauma to Drake and others."

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On Thursday's podcast episode, Bell described Peck's abuse as "something I live with every day." He said that "getting my story out" in the documentary "did help… but still, at the end of the day, just because I put it in a documentary, it's not, all of a sudden the wounds are healed. Like, 'Oh, all right, I'm all better now!' It's something I'm going to live with for the rest of my life."

Listen to Bell on The Sarah Fraser Show above.

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