Drake Bell is opening up about finances.
The 39-year-old Drake & Josh star made an appearance on The Unplanned Podcast, the actor, where he revealed to hosts Abby Howard and Matt Howard that he doesn’t receive residual checks from his time on Nickelodeon.
After getting his start on The Amanda Show, he starred alongside Josh Peck in the hit series Drake & Josh for four seasons between 2004 and 2007.
He described the system in place for child stars’ earnings as “flawed.”
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“That’s the perception of the world, it’s always been this way,” he said. “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 continued. “And especially, which is the bummer for most of us on Nickelodeon, we don’t get residuals for our shows.”
He explained that almost everyone who featured on the network received a one-time payment for their work, while other people are paid every time their shows air.
“You wanna get into syndication,” he explained. “You wanna get to 100 episodes so that you can get to syndication, and then you wanna 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 year, you make $13,000,000. You make 20 episodes that year, you make $20,000,000, right?
“But right now, each cast member of Friends just in syndication alone is making over $20,000,000 a year, and they’re not filming a show every week. 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. And they’re making over $20,000,000 in a year just because other networks are buying the rights for syndication,” he added.
Matt questioned whether Nickelodeon stars didn’t receive residuals because of their age at the time they were filming.
“It’s a lot of evil, corrupt people. That’s the only thing, that is the answer,” Drake said, adding, “There’s no other answer.”
He then clarified that only a few guest stars from the show continue to receive a check in the mail from all the people who featured on the network around the time that he did, and said he sees marathons of Drake & Josh on television with commercials, yet he doesn’t receive anything from the replays.
“Do everything that they do to us mentally and emotionally, and then throw us to the wolves,” he said. “And we’re like, okay, cool. I got rent this month. There are three channels doing Drake & Josh marathons,” he continued. “Netflix just bought it, it’s top 10 on Netflix, and I gotta figure out how to pay my rent this month.”
“And some fat cat with a cigar is just sitting up at the top of Viacom just going [chuckles]. What do you call it? It’s just like getting high on child labor,” he added.
“People don’t understand how the business works, the business side of this. They just see what the perception is on Instagram and social media and all the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood,” he said.
“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.”
He also talked about a potential Drake & Josh reunion.
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