Drake Bell feels cheated, and he’s not thrilled about it.
The “Drake & Josh” alum, 39, not too long ago claimed that “no one” on Nickelodeon receives residuals for his or her time on the favored youngsters’s community. He additionally slammed the idea that everybody on TV is wealthy.
“That’s the perception of the world, it’s always been this way,” Bell stated throughout an episode of “The Unplanned Podcast” on July 2. “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,” he defined. “And especially, which is the bummer for most of us on Nickelodeon, we don’t get residuals for our shows.”
Bell, who made his Nickelodeon debut on “The Amanda Show” with Amanda Bynes in 1999 earlier than co-starring on “Drake & Josh” with Josh Peck from 2004 to 2007, revealed that just about everybody on the community solely receives a one-time fee for his or her work.
He then in contrast Nickelodeon’s “flawed” system to exhibits like “Seinfeld” and “Friends,” and famous how the casts of these sitcoms nonetheless earn hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from syndication residuals.
“You want to get into syndication,” Bell advised podcast hosts Abby and Matt Howard. “You want to get to 100 episodes so that you can get to syndication, and then you want to get into syndication because then you get your residual money, that’s where you make your money.”
“For example, the ‘Friends’ cast at the peak was making a million dollars an episode,” he continued. “You make 13 episodes that yr, you make $13 million. You make 20 episodes that yr, you make $20 million, proper?
“But right now, each cast member of ‘Friends,’ just in syndication alone, is making over $20 million a year, and they’re not filming a show every week,” Bell added. “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.”
When Matt requested whether or not Nickelodeon stars didn’t obtain residuals as a result of they have been little one actors, Bell claimed it was as a result of the community was run by “a lot of evil, corrupt people.”
“That’s the only thing, that is the answer,” he stated. “There’s no other answer.”
In the meantime, Bell lamented how he nonetheless doesn’t obtain residuals regardless of seeing “Drake & Josh” replays and marathons on TV and fashionable streaming companies.
“Do everything that they do to us mentally and emotionally, and then throw us to the wolves,” he stated. “And we’re like, okay, cool. I got rent this month.”
“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,” the actor continued. “And some fat cat with a cigar is just sitting up at the top of Viacom, just going. What do you call it? It’s just like getting high on child labor.”
Bell, who filed for chapter again in 2014, ended the podcast phase by saying that individuals exterior of the leisure business “don’t understand how the business works.”
“They just see what the perception is on Instagram and social media and all the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood,” he stated. “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,” Bell concluded. “It literally says in the contract, across universes and galaxies and planets.”
The Publish has reached out to Bell’s rep and Nickelodeon for remark.
This wouldn’t be the primary time the “Drake & Josh” alum slammed Nickelodeon and the “flawed” system the community had in place to guard little one stars.
Final yr, Bell slammed Nickelodeon’s “pretty empty” apology after the “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” docuseries uncovered the poisonous behind-the-scenes world of youngsters’s TV exhibits.
Bell additionally revealed within the bombshell docuseries that he had been sexually assaulted by performing coach Brian Peck, and alleged that the stunning abuse is what began him down his self-destructive highway.
