Yvette Nicole Brown says her earliest acting teachers were actually her childhood classmates Drake & Josh. “It was amazing to see Drake [Bell]Josh [Peck] and Miranda [Cosgrove] to be so amazing at such a young age,” the newlyweds tell PEOPLE during a recent interview. “I was just starting out as an actor, so I was really studying and studying those babies and learning how they moved on those sets.” Brown, 53, played Helen Dubois, the manager of the Premiere Theater and Josh’s (Josh Peck) boss on the Nickelodeon sitcom about the half-brothers. Her character recurred from 2004 to 2007 in seasons 2 to 4.
“It was one of the first or second things I did,” she says. “It was really exciting to be on that training ground and already working with professionals, even though they were very young.”
Yvette Nicole Brown as Helen Dubois on Drake & Josh.
Nickelodeon/Netflix
Brown adds, “We had a really good time.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Brown and Peck recently had a mini Drake & Josh reunion on his podcast, Good guys.“I didn’t know this was going to happen,” Brown says. “He said, ‘We’d like to do some scenes here on the podcast, and I happened to have this scene from Drake & Josh.’ He pulled a scene from [season 3 episode] ‘Helen’s Surgery’ — when I go in for eye surgery.” In the episode of the podcast, released on November 4, the former actors returned to their roles.
“I sound the same,” Peck says in a clip posted to Instagram. “You sound like it,” Brown agrees. In the series, Helen hated Josh. But in real life, Brown says she “adored” Peck. “Me and Josh got right back into those characters [for the November reunion]. You’d think it was yesterday, 20 years ago,” Brown tells PEOPLE. “It was really interesting to realize how these characters still live in our bodies and we can just become Helen and Josh.”
Later in the podcast episode, Brown revealed this as well Drake & Josh it remains one of her most recognized roles. “If they stop me on the street, they stop me for Drake & Josh more than anything — even more than Community,” Brown said. “People still love Helen. It was 15 episodes, 20 years ago, but they still love the old girl.”
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Source: HIS Education