• Drake Bell starred in The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh on Nickelodeon in the 2000s
• The actor tells PEOPLE he felt overwhelmed by the decisions he had to make after Drake & Josh came to an end: “You have to know everything about taxes, bank accounts, car loans and insurance and mortgage payments and rents”
• Bell says music has “always been my passion” and he is currently on tour in support of his latest album, Non-Stop Flight

Drake Bell admits that life after Nickelodeon came with a lot of uncertainty.

Drake & Josh ended in 2007 and left Bell, 38, to figure out his next step at age 21 after growing up on television. “You’re thrust to the world and no one’s telling you what to do,” Bell, who revealed he has a new girlfriend after splitting from his ex-wife Janet Von Schmeling in 2023, tells PEOPLE. “You’re thrown to the wolves and you’re expected to make the right decisions, do the right things without any guidance.”

Bell says he and his former costar Josh Peck felt extra pressure “to be good role models” as young men in the spotlight. “That’s where all of the stress [came from],” Bell continues. “You’re like, ‘Whoa, I don’t even know … do I buy fabric softener? Does that go in the washing machine?’ You have to know everything about taxes, bank accounts, car loans and insurance and mortgage payments and rents. I don’t know what I’m doing!”

The former child star refers to that period in his life when he “lost my path” as “a roller coaster.”

But traveling to Mexico to promote his music in 2008 put him back on track.

“I put out an album around 2006, and I went out there in 2008 after a tour in the States, and it was just a completely different experience,” Bell recalls. “We got out there and we were selling out 10,000-, 20,000-seat arenas, and the album was No 1. The song was No. 1. It was like we stepped into an alternate reality.”

Since then, Bell — who is currently on tour in support of his latest album, Non-Stop Flight —  has continued to grow his international audience.

“It spread through Latin America, and so, I just got back from Ecuador. We’ve got shows coming up again in Ecuador and Paraguay and Argentina and Peru. It’s been a lot of fun,” the Amanda Show vet says.

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Bell says Mexico “feels like home” these days. “I’m in Mexico 99, 98% of the time right now,” he continues. “Sometimes the music hits in different regions that you don’t expect. When I went to Mexico in 2008 was the first time really shown love for my music and for the art that I’m creating.”

He’d always wanted to focus on music, as it has “always been my passion,” Bell says. “With acting, you don’t really have the ability to just create whenever you want. I guess nowadays it’s a little different with technology, YouTube, but with my generation, you had to go to an audition, you had to get picked. Whereas with music, I could at any time going to the studio and record a song and produce a record. This is what I love.”

And the ”Dandelion” singer has the support of his Nickelodeon family — literally. Bell shares that his on-screen parents Jonathan Goldstein and Nancy Sullivan attended a concert of his in December and he remains “pretty much in contact with everybody” from Drake & Josh.

“My makeup artist who I worked with 20 years ago, I talk to him three times a week,” Bell says. “I was just talking with our stand-in Lane Napper, who lives in New York. I was just texting with Yvette [Nicole Brown] two days ago. We really all were getting along and having a great time. We were like a family.”

Bell continues to embrace his Nickelodeon roots. He attended The Nostalgia Con in Houston in December and in May, he’ll host a 2000s bar crawl in Washington, D.C., where he’ll perform the Drake & Josh theme song.

“It’s amazing because you really see the multi-generational fan base that the show still has,” he says. I mean, we have kids coming up that are 7, 8 years old, and they’re quoting the show. And I’m like, ‘You weren’t even born when we got canceled! So awesome.’ It just shows that the show’s still got love and it’s still growing and it lives on. It’s really, really cool.”