Who wrote letters of support for Brian Peck?
Boy Meets World stars Will Friedle and Rider Strong talked on their podcast Pod Meets World about how they regret supporting Brian Peck when he was arrested in 2003. The duo detailed that the producer made time to spend with them. “This was the type of thing where the person he presented was this great, funny guy who was really good at his job, and you wanted to hang out with,” said Friedle. “I saw him every day, hung out with him every day, talked to him every day.” They also disclosed that they “spent a lot of time together outside of work.”
“We’re sitting in that courtroom on the wrong side of everything … The victim’s mother turned and said, ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you. And it doesn’t change what you did to my kid,’” Friedle shared. “I just sat there wanting to die. It was like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ It was horrifying all the way around.”
“We weren’t told the whole story, but it doesn’t change the fact that we did it. I still can’t get the words out to describe all of the things that I’m feeling inside of myself.”
Friedle continued, “There’s an actual victim here. And he turned us against the victim to where now we’re on his team. That’s the thing where, to me, I look back at that as my ever-loving shame for this entire [thing],” he said. “Getting taken in by somebody who’s a good actor and a manipulator, I could chalk that up to being young and that’s the way it is. It’s awful. I’m going to use that for my growth as a human being, but when there’s an actual victim involved and now I’m on the abuser’s side, that’s the thing I can’t get over and haven’t been able to get over.”
In the documentary, All That stars Giovonnie Samuels and Bryan Hearne talked about their relationship with Peck who worked on the show. “We would run lines with him all the time. He signed my ‘All That’ yearbook,” said Samuels of Peck. “We were invited to his house for parties and things.
“We were all under this naive cloak of, ‘We’re a family, we all hang out,’” she added. “‘This is normal. This is common that an adult would want to be friends with a child.“
During Peck’s trial, James Marsden wrote a letter of support, “I assure you what Brian has been through in the last year is the suffering of 100 men,” adding that he has known Peck since he was a teenager.
For more on the alleged abuse within Nickelodeon, read Jennette McCurdy’s 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died . In #1 The New York Times bestseller, McCurdy, who starred as Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon’s iCarly from 2007 to 2012, opens up about growing up as a child star, her time on Nickelodeon, and the alleged abuse she suffered from her late mother, who died while Puckett was starring on the iCarly spinoff, Sam & Cat. “Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair,” the publisher’s description reads.
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