Josh Peck speaks out for the first time on longtime feud with Drake Bell

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...rake-Bell.html

By ASHLEY HUME FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 17:46 EDT, 18 March 2022 | UPDATED: 18:04 EDT, 18 March 2022

Josh Peck has spoken out for the first time on his longtime feud with former Drake & Josh co-star Drake Bell.

On Wednesday, the 35-year-old actor appeared on Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards' BFFs podcast and was asked whether the two were still friends.

'Not really. No,' Josh replied with a laugh.

Taking to Twitter after the ceremony, Drake wrote: 'When you're not invited to the wedding the message is clear... True colors have come out today. Message is loud and clear. Ties are officially cut. I'll miss you brotha.'

Back then: Drake, 35, and Josh played stepbrothers on the hit Nickelodeon show that ran from 2004 to 2007.

However, they became engaged in highly publicized spat when Josh did not invite Drake to his 2017 wedding.

In a separate Tweet, he wrote, 'Loyalty is key. ALWAYS remember where you came from.'

Until his appearance on Wednesday, Josh had never publicly addressed Drake's tweets, which the Superhero star later deleted.

'I didn't invite him to my wedding and the internet went crazy,' Josh said.

'And it's like, delusional, like bro, we worked at Coffee Bean when we were 16, like I'm sorry, I'm 31 now and I might have lost your number.'

Josh went on to recall how Drake vented his feelings with social media posts that immediately caused a stir with fans.

'And then he leans in and goes on this press tour about how heartbroken he is and creating this narrative that just wasn't true.'

The Amanda Show alum expressed that he was concerned for Paige amid the furious backlash from fans.

'I don't care about me, it's, whatever, I signed up to be a public person,' he said. 'It is what it is. But here's my wife, who's like, getting torn down on the Internet and I'm like, she's private and she just got married.'

Josh explained that there was nothing for him to say because he did not want to disillusion fans about the true state of his relationship with Drake.

'Then I would be the bearer of bad news so I just had to eat it and let him go wild,' he recalled.

Six months later, the actors appeared to have reconciled when they both posted an Instagram photo in which they were seen hugging at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards.

In both posts, the photo was captioned, 'Hug me...,' in reference to the famous Drake & Josh catchphrase, 'Hug me, brotha.'

However, Josh shared the story of the events leading up to the snap, revealing that the moment was not as amicable as it seemed.

'I see him at the Music Video Awards and he sees me. I go up to him and this might be the most Sopranos thing I've ever done, I look at him and I go, 'Go apologize to my wife right now.''

'And he goes, 'Okay' and he like, made a beeline for my wife and I see him do like, this whole five-minute performance of an apology and I was like, 'Go apologize to my wife or something bad's gonna happen.'''

Though Josh indicated that the VMAs interaction was the 'pretty much' the last communication between the pair, they did appear together in a 2018 Instagram video in which Drake congratulated Josh on his wife's pregnancy.

When asked if he and Drake were ever close when they worked together, Josh replied, 'Obviously there were times where we were closer than not, but inevitably when the show ended, I mean, we were just totally different kids.'

On Thursday, Drake's wife Janet Von Schmeling contradicted Josh's account of the VMAs interaction in an Instagram Story that she later deleted.

According to E! News, she said, 'I stay quiet until lies happen. And the fact [is] that I was there at the VMAs I was next to Drake.'

She continued, 'I was one who told him that Josh was coming up with the camera. I literally was there, heard it all.

'Drake was never threatened by Josh, like, ever. That's actually hilarious that he would act like he could be the tough guy. Like, bro you're not tough.'

Janet asserted that her husband apologized to Josh after he 'nicely' asked him.

'You said, "Could you apologize to my wife?" And Drake was like, "Absolutely". And he did, and it was great.'

She also disputed Josh's claim that the two had not interacted since the VMAs.

'And we actually hung out after that, multiple times,' Janet said. 'We've talked multiple times since then. So like, you're a f******g liar. A f******g liar, Josh.'

Meanwhile, Drake also responded to Josh's claims on his Instagram Story.

On Thursday, he shared a screenshot in which a reporter appeared to have mixed up Drake and Josh's managers when attempting to get Drake's side of the story.

He wrote, 'This who is writing all the celebrity gossip you believe! They literally can't even get his name right or who his manager is and they are about to run a story. Man life is really weird'.

Drake then posted a poll in which he asked his followers to choose between 'Josh Bell' or 'Drake Peck'.

He also shared a photo of Josh in character as teen Italian mob boss Tony Pajamas in The Amanda Show to mock his Sopranos reference in the interview.

He wrote out Josh's quote, 'This might be the most Sopranos thing I've ever done, I look at him and I go, '"Go apologize to my wife right now.''

'Hey A.J. Soprano, too bad this interaction is on film,' he wrote adding a crying laughing smiley emoji.

'Oh and,' he wrote with a smiley face surrounded by hearts emoji.