• Drake Bell starred in The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh on Nickelodeon in the 2000s
• The actor tells PEOPLE about “trying to figure out life” as an “adolescent” after Drake & Josh ended in 2007
• Bell says “there’s a strong love” for his music “outside the U.S.” and he will be heading to South America for tour dates in support of his latest album, Non-Stop Flight

Life in Hollywood can be tough on anyone, but navigating it as a kid put extra pressure on Drake Bell.

“When you’re an adult, of course, it still has [an] effect, but when you’re this adolescent trying to figure out life and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Why every time?’” Bell, 38, tells PEOPLE.

The Nickelodeon alum feels like even when he didn’t “make a mistake” while out and about in the 2000s, the media would try to make it seem like he did.

“You’re walking with your friends and you trip outside of the Chateau Marmont on your way to the taco shop, and all of a sudden the next day it’s like, ‘Drake Bell stumbles drunk out of the Chateau Marmont,’” Bell says. “You’re like, ‘There was a crack! I tripped on the sidewalk!’ It’s always just that highlighting of all of your missteps.”

Bell came up during the peak tabloid era, but he’ll take that over today’s intense social media scrutiny.

“I’m thankful that Josh and I missed the social media era while we were working,” he says of former Drake & Josh costar Josh Peck. “We didn’t have to compare, ‘Why did Josh have more followers than I do on Instagram? Oh, Josh got more likes on his picture than I did that I posted. What do I have to do?’ I’m just so glad that we didn’t have to live through that.”

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Though Bell has been focusing on his music as he tours the world for his latest album, Non-Stop Flight, the “I Kind of Relate” singer hasn’t abandoned acting. Bell reveals he’s been working on a “fun romantic comedy” in Mexico, where he’s amassed a large fan base.

“I’m in Mexico a lot,” Bell says. “I recorded half my record there. I do a lot of work there, but I feel like I don’t have a permanent place right now just because I’m traveling so much. It’s literally spend two days in my apartment and then every other day is in a hotel, on a plane, in a car. I’m not sure where I live right now!”

The ex-teen star does consider Mexico home now, though, after his music took off there following the end of Drake & Josh.

“I don’t know if in the States maybe sometimes there’s been a stigma of like, ‘Oh, you’re on TV. You’re not a real music [person].’ They just blur the lines outside the United States,” Bell hypothesizes of why his music took off in Mexico and South America. “So they know me from the show, but the first time we went out there, they’re singing all the lyrics from the album, the songs that aren’t on the show, and fans are telling me about my lyrics and my songs. There’s a strong love for the music outside the U.S. It’s really cool.”

Bell says that “loving what I do” has helped him navigate life after opening up about the sexual abuse he endured as a child star under his former dialogue coach Brian Peck in the Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV docuseries last year.

“I want to get on stage and perform. I want to make movies and TV. I want to make people laugh,” he continues. “I got to just stay focused and happy and healthy and keep my mind away from the demons. They’re always there, but being positive, trying not to dwell and keeping people around you that care about you, that’s something that I really gained. I have people that really care about what I have to say, and I need to focus on this.”

Billionaire John Paulson tells Page Six he’s bought the Princeton Club after reading in our column that the place was for sale — and what his big plans for the place are.

“I learned about the Princeton Club mortgage sale from Page Six,” said the hedge funder. “I was intrigued, looked into it and bought it.”

The Wall Street titan, 69, says of the 81,860-square-foot space at 15 W. 43rd St.: “It’s a fantastic club. It has so many potential uses.”

He adds, “We are exploring a sale” — or potentially turning the former Ivy League establishment into a private club for “vibrant 20- and 30-year-olds” as “their place to go.”

“Would be hugely popular. Stay tuned!” he said.

Bloomberg revealed that Paulson was the mystery buyer of the club, which hit the skids in 2021 during the pandemic and ultimately defaulted on a nearly $40 million mortgage.

The club — which had no financial association with the famed, well-endowed university — was reportedly seeking a lifeline, and unsuccessfully tried to find help in another billionaire, Google whiz and Princeton grad Eric Schmidt.

(Paulson graduated summa cum laude from NYU, and went on to Harvard Business School. He’s donated generously to both.)

The address was home to the Princeton Club for 60 years, but the club had three other homes over 160 years.

The space included two restaurants, a fitness center, squash courts and 58 guest rooms available to alumni, students and faculty.

Paulson — who was a potential nominee for Treasury secretary under Donald Trump — has previously invested in hospitality projects. His Paulson Puerto Rico arm began with a 2013 investment in the St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort and now includes a portfolio of hotels.

He and his fiancée, Alina de Almeida, recently welcomed a baby, we reported.

Kat Dennings knew early on she wanted a cool stage name. 

During the Thursday, March 13 episode of the Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce podcast, the Shifting Gears star, 38, shared that she wasn’t even 10 years old when she decided to drop her given name: Katherine Victoria Litwack.

“My real last name is Litwack — that’s all you need to hear,” the actress said.

“At 9, I was like, ‘This isn’t going to work for me. This is not going to work,’ ” the 2 Broke Girls alum told Kelce, 32.

Applauding her younger self, Dennings added, “She-slash-I was very ahead of her time.”

“It was a CEO situation. I was like, ‘This can’t be displayed on a poster,’ ” the actress joked. 

She explained how she adopted that last name for her moniker, recalling her mother Ellen Litwack’s good friend Lloyd Alexander, who wrote children’s fantasy books such as The Chronicles of Prydain series. 

“Randomly, he was my mother’s best friend,” she said. “So I went there every week until I was 15 years old, and they were like my grandparents, he and his wife. And his wife’s name was Janine Denni, she was French.”

The foreign last name left a young Katherine fairly impressed. 

“And I thought it would be a super sick idea if I took her name and made it different,” she said. “Literally, that was the thinking. That’s as far as it went. So Dennings is from her.”

Dennings also explained that choosing her first name wasn’t as simple as abbreviating her own. The actress credits Christina Ricci’s Kat in the movie Casper as her “favorite character at the time” as the inspiration. 

“So I was like, ‘Okay, Kat Dennings. This is it, I can really picture it,’ ” she said, adding, “It’s insane.”

A few years later, she was already landing significant roles on shows like Sex and the City, however, they didn’t always come easy.

Earlier this year, Dennings spoke exclusively to PEOPLE about how casting directors called her “fat” and not “pretty” when she was just 14.

“The time that I was auditioning and starting to act, it was a very different environment than it is now,” she said in the January 2025 interview. “There was not a lot of inclusivity at all. It was very harsh. There was a lot of extremely negative feedback and people would not hold back.”

“It was pretty crazy thinking about it. I’m like, ‘How can anyone say that about a little kid? This is insane,’ ” the Dollface actress said. “For example, I was 12. I’d go into an audition and I’d do it, and my manager would call me and I’d be like, ‘How’d it go?’ And they’d be like, ‘Well, they thought you weren’t pretty enough and you’re fat.’ ”

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Dennings admitted, “For some reason, it didn’t break my spirit.”

Instead, she decided to continue acting despite the criticism. 

“I was like, ‘I’ll show them,'” she added laughing.

Shifting Gears airs on ABC Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET.