The "Drake vs. Josh" saga continues.
On March 19, Drake Bell responded to the recent drama between him and former Drake & Josh co-star Josh Peck. Last week, the latter said on the BFFs podcast that the two were no longer friends and broke his silence about the angry tweets Drake had posted in 2017 about not being invited to his wedding. He also talked about what allegedly happened between the two former TV stepbrothers at a subsequent reunion at the MTV VMAs.
Drake's wife Janet Bell had disputed Josh's take in a scathing since-deleted Instagram Story video. On the inaugural episode of the actor-musician and his wife's podcast, Drake & Janet, she and Drake appeared together with their 9-month-old son. Beginning the conversation about Josh, Janet jokingly asked the boy, as he sat on his dad's lap, "So what do you think about Josh Peck?"
"Are you and Max going to have a TV show?" she continued, referring to Josh and wife Paige's son, 3, to which Drake responded, "Oh my God, could you imagine? That would be, I mean, it would be a hit. They are so adorable."
On BFFs, Josh had said Drake's angry tweets about not being invited to his wedding spurred fans to harass Paige online. Josh claimed that at his reunion at the 2017 VMAs, he did a "Sopranos thing" and told Drake, "Go apologize to my wife or something bad's gonna happen,'" and that his former co-star complied. The first seconds of Drake & Janet depicted Josh speaking these words which depicted as a puppet version of Sopranos character Anthony John "A.J." Soprano Jr.
"Like, what bad things could've happened?" asked Janet, who had said on Instagram that she witnessed the encounter and that Josh had asked Drake "nicely" to apologize to Paige.
Drake echoed her comments on the couple's podcast, saying, "[Josh] goes, 'Hey man, you don't need to say 'sorry' to me but I really need you to say sorry to Paige.' And I was like, 'Yeah, dude, absolutely.' Like, I want to say sorry to Paige. And that was it."
On BFFs, Josh said, "The dirty little secret, I guess, was like, I knew that Drake and I didn't stay in touch for the 10 years since we made the show" and that he didn't invite him to his wedding because he "hadn't really talking to him in many, many years."
"That's what bugged me about it," Drake said on the couple's podcast "was that he's like, oh, we weren't friends."
The pair talked about instances where they interacted with Josh in the years leading up to his wedding. She said he had attended a Christmas party with the couple and also supported Drake at his album release party. Drake said he had texted Josh to congratulate him after he and Paige got engaged.
"But I was bummed," he said, regarding his tweets. "I was like, man, that sucks, like I wish I could have been there for you. And I think really what it was, was like, why I said what I said, was because Josh and I've always had our ups and downs and all this stuff and I don't know why, maybe it's just because we were kids and we had our own demons and stuff."
Janet said Drake, who has spoken about his feelings about not being invited to the wedding before, added, "We've had our ups and downs. We're had times when we wanted to kill each other. We were like brothers. I know Josh and I'm closer to Josh than I am to own brothers."
Drake and Janet also talked about a since-abandoned Drake & Josh sequel series idea that he and Josh were working on in recent years. Drake had first teased the project in the media in 2019, two years before he was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to child endangerment charges following communications with an underage girl. He later admitted in an Instagram video to sending "reckless and irresponsible text messages" to the individual, without knowing the person's age.
On the couple's podcast, Janet said she and Drake they "pitched a Drake & Josh reboot show called Josh & Drake."
According to the couple, the project was shelved following some creative differences. The pair were not happy with the script, which they said Josh wrote.
"It wasn't the best," Janet said. "Josh wrote Drake as a failed musician and Josh wrote himself as a real estate agent. OK, that's fine, but Drake is a musician in real life, so it wouldn't make sense."
Drake said, "I just asked him to change a couple things and he couldn't and my wife wouldn't let me do it."
E! News has reached out to Josh's rep for comment and has not heard back.