Drake Bell Shares Where He Stands with Amanda Bynes, Calls Her His ‘Idol’ Growing Up

While appearing on the Good Guys podcast, co-hosted by his former Drake & Josh co-star Josh Peck, Bell reflected on working alongside Bynes on The Amanda Show, and shared where they stand now.

“I randomly talked to her — it was 2017 maybe. Maybe around 2016, 2017, 2018? I don’t know. It was around that time. I randomly messaged her. She was in the news or something and I was just thinking about her,” Bell said when asked about the last time he spoke to Bynes, who was notably absent from the Quiet on Set documentary, which detailed the side of Nickelodeon mired with allegations of abuse and mistreatment of the young kids who worked on the network.

He continued, “I was like, ‘I’m just gonna message her. She’ll never see it. She’ll never respond.’ And then she responded and we messaged back and forth a little bit, and that was the last I talked to her.”

While they may not be as close these days, Bell said that growing up, Bynes was someone he admired and looked up to.

“She was an idol to me. I grew up on All That,” Bell said, with Peck calling her one of the “most talented” people.

“And when I auditioned for The Amanda Show, she may as well have been Rachel on Friends,” Bell continued. “She was the biggest thing on the planet to me.”

Bell co-starred with Bynes on Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show from 1999 to 2002 before starring in his own spin-off with Peck on the network.

“I’ve seen her, like, every two to three years we’ll run into each other,” Peck added. “And she’s just the greatest. She was great then. She remains great and such a good person.”

While he acknowledged that Bynes has had some public struggles, namely with her mental health and the conservatorship she was placed under by her parents, Peck said Bynes has “one of the great hearts and one of the great skills, great talents of anyone there ever is. I just love her.”

Bell said that there was something really special about just being able to witness a talent of that caliber, calling Bynes a “force of nature” on  the screen.

“All I’ve ever experienced with Amanda was just like this dynamite force of nature when it comes to talent,” Bell said. “Watching her was like watching Carol Burnett, was like watching Tracey Ullman.”

As for what Bynes has been up to in more recent years, while she remains fairly quiet on social media, in April 2024 she said she was working towards becoming a manicurist, telling her followers on Instagram that she planned to return to school in order to study manicurist theory.

“Since I haven’t passed the board exam yet to get my manicurist license, I started back at school to study manicurist theory to practice doing acrylics before I take the test again so I’ll be good to go when I get a job at a nail salon,” Bynes wrote at the time.

The 38-year-old actress first revealed that she was attending cosmetology school to become a manicurist back in October 2022, after earning her associate’s degree at Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in 2019.

She decided to continue her studies there by pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree the following year, and in 2022 revealed she had completed 100 hours towards getting her nail tech license as she moved toward this new career.