Character: Drake Parker
Growing up in California, Drake Bell entered the entertainment industry when he was just 8 years old, booking a role in an episode of “Home Improvement” in 1994. His career took off almost immediately, with the young actor being cast in “Jerry Maguire,” “The Drew Carey Show,” “Seinfeld,” and numerous other series and films until he was finally cast as a regular on “The Amanda Show.” The Nickelodeon series united him with Nancy Sullivan and, most consequentially, Josh Peck. Just two years after its end, all three of them would star on “Drake & Josh” together, with Bell playing too-cool-for-school, wannabe-rock-star Drake Parker. One could argue the character was loosely based on Bell — aside from the fact that he shared a name with his on-screen persona, Bell, too, was an aspiring musician who wrote and recorded the show’s theme song.
Bell devoted much of his time and energy toward nurturing his music career, having released his debut album “Telegraph” to positive reviews in 2005. Its follow-up, 2006’s “It’s Only Time,” wasn’t as well-received critically in the U.S., but has been noted online as being Bell’s first album to break through in Mexico. In 2014, years after a hard drive with an album’s worth of unreleased music went missing (later recovered and released in 2020 as “The Lost Album”), he rallied and released “Ready Steady Go!,” which seemingly further cemented his presence in Latin America.
By 2020, Bell had changed his name to “Drake Campana,” pledged to exclusively communicate on social media in Spanish, and in general fully embraced his Mexican fanbase to the point that rumors circulated online that he had chosen to move to Mexico. Though the singer denied having moved, he did apparently spend the majority of his time in the country. Some online have speculated he did so in reaction to several public controversies, most notably pleading guilty to attempted child endangering and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles in 2017.
Bell denied having moved to Mexico for this reason, instead sharing on Josh Peck’s podcast in 2025 that it was simply due to his community leaving his full-time home in Los Angeles. Alternatively, a lyric from Bell’s deeply personal and confessional 2024 single “I Kind of Relate” (the music video for which is seen above) reads, “I lost my path so long ago in 2008 / I found love in Mexico / ‘Cause no one wants to hear me in the States.”
As for Bell’s acting career, he starred in Craig Mazin’s 2008 “Spider-Man” parody “Superhero Movie,” then went on to become the main voice actor for Spider-Man himself in “Ultimate Spider-Man” and a litany of other official Marvel animated projects. In 2016, Bell and Peck reunited for an episode of Peck’s sitcom “Grandfathered.” Finally, in 2024, Bell made an unexpected appearance in the Investigation Discovery docuseries “Quiet on Set,” revealing that he had been the victim of severe and systemic abuse while working on “The Amanda Show.”
