Josh Peck, known for his roles in “Drake and Josh,” The Amanda Show,” and “All That,” has come a long way since his early days on Nickelodeon.
The actor, who battled depression and addiction throughout his teens and 20s, became sober at the age of 21 after losing more than 100 pounds.
Today, the 35-year-old is now a husband and a father, and he’s laying out all of the ups and downs of his journey in a new memoir titled, “Happy People Are Annoying.”
“It’s probably the most millennial thing I could ever do, which is write a memoir at 35,” Peck told Yahoo Finance during a recent interview.
“But I realized that I had gone through this inflection point in my life. I was 35 with a wife, a kid. I’ve had a reasonable amount of success. I’ve been incredibly lucky, but I certainly had to deal with plenty of struggles and challenges,” he said.
“I truly wrote this book for people like me, who are finding their way through this weird, weird world.”
Peck, who currently stars in Hulu’s “How I Met Your Father” (DIS) and has appeared in Paramount+’s “iCarly” reboot (PARA), described Hollywood’s transition to streaming as one anchored in people’s desire to “see exactly what you want to see at that time.”
Ultimately, “great content is going to win out no matter where it is,” the actor said.
“It’s no longer where people are tuning in, just because of a network name brand — great content is the thing that’s going to drive audiences, and there’s never been a richer time for that,” he added.
Although Peck is staying busy today, there was a point in his career where he had to change course. His pivot? Social media.
“The most frustrating part was this idea of being beholden to the gatekeepers, this idea that it always took a chain of command for me to get a job, [but] social media allowed me to go directly to my audience and bypass the gatekeepers,” Peck said of the transition, which eventually gave him the financial freedom to take on other projects.
“I was aware of the fact that being able to go directly to an audience, create something for them, to know what they liked, what they didn’t like, and everything in between…that was powerful,” he continued.
Today, the actor is well-established on TikTok with nearly 33 million followers across his various social channels — and a lot of ad dollars and brand deals to his name.
“Great content is going to win out no matter where it is…”Josh Peck, Actor
Peck’s ‘just do it’ approach to his career (and career pivots) stems from his childhood growing up with a single mother.
Describing their relationship as “a scrappy startup,” Peck said the idea of “pivot, pivot, pivot” was cemented into his ideology from a young age.
“The idea that we could easily move around and fly 3,000 miles to go do ‘Drake and Josh’ when I grew up in New York and moved to LA, or that my mom could support me to be a nine year old comedian…I’m not sure if we had a traditional family structure [that] we would have been able to do that, but because it was her and I, and I had her full support, we were able to to pivot at every turn,” he revealed.
Alexandra is a Senior Entertainment and Food Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alliecanal8193
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