Drake Bell: I talk to Amanda Bynes every day

Published April 06, 2016

(Getty Images/ ET Handout)

While Amanda Bynes is tweeting her affections for rapper Drake, she's apparently spending time with her former co-star Drake Bell. "The Amanda Show" star comes to the defense of his friend, claiming that he is in constant contact with the 27-year-old actress.

"I talk to her every day. She’s a sweetheart. I had lunch with her yesterday, and she’s brilliant. She's good, and she's healthy," Bell, 26, told OK! magazine on June 9.

As for her recent behavior, including an arrest after she allegedly tried to discard a bong out of her New York apartment building, the actor says of his friend, "She's in a place right now where she is searching. She's ready to be her own person, and do her own thing. She's experiencing life for real, without the spotlight, for the first time. She is a girl who is finding herself."

Bell insists that it's the media that is portraying her as an unstable person. "It hurts me and it upsets me, because I look at her and talk to her, and we'll sit down for lunch or dinner, and I'm like 'Amanda, what is going on?' And she's like 'whatever,'" he explains. "She's the same beautiful, funny, artistic, thoughtful person that she's always been, but she decided to change her hairstyle. She got a bad hairdo and shaved her head, so she had to get extensions. Now everyone’s like 'oh, you’re crazy.'"