Investigative Discovery released its four-part series “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Children’s TV” on March 18, sending Nickelodeon fans of several generations into a tailspin.
The documentary features former child performers and production players at the company characterizing a profoundly disappointing workplace culture under the reign of Dan Schneider.
A decade ago, Mr. Schneider—showrunner on “All That,” “The Amanda Show,” “Drake & Josh,” “Zoey 101,” “iCarly,” “Victorious,” and “Sam & Cat”—received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2014 Kids’ Choice Awards.
Four years later, he and the network where he fledged his creative kingdom as—per the New York Times—“the Norman Lear of Children’s Television,” parted ways.
With the rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017, Mr. Schneider’s exit came as little surprise.
A suspicion that Mr. Schneider had gotten the boot over his “foot fetish” invited a deeper look into accusations of repeated exploitation, humiliation, and objectification of his stars.
In Episode 3, “Drake & Josh” and “The Amanda Show” star Drake Bell, now 37, publicly alleges for the first time how Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck—no relation to Mr. Bell’s co-star on both shows, Josh Peck—sexually assaulted him for six months when he was 15.
Mr. Bell alleges that Mr. Peck, 41 at the time, conditioned the teenage actor-musician to drive a wedge between his already-divorced parents over the management of Mr. Bell’s career—leaving Mr. Bell’s father unduly out of the picture, and his mother vulnerable to bamboozlement.
Mr. Bell recalled the “extensive” and “pretty brutal” abuse he suffered with some deliberate languish before adding: “I really don’t know how to elaborate on that on camera ... why don’t you think of the worst stuff that someone could do to somebody as a sexual assault, and that'll answer your question.”
What we know now, with the high-profile identity of Mr. Peck’s victim revealed: in 2003, the Los Angeles Police Department charged him with a lewd act upon a child; sodomy of a person under 16; attempted sodomy of a person under 16; sexual penetration by a foreign object; four counts of oral copulation of a person under 16; oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance; sending harmful matter; and using a minor for sex acts.
Mr. Peck pleaded “no contest” to performing a lewd act with a victim around 14 or 15 years old and to oral copulation with a child under 16 years old at his sentencing, which resulted in a 16-month prison stint.
“Quiet on Set” co-directors Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz successfully petitioned the courts to unseal documents pertaining to the case, including 41 letters in support of Mr. Peck.
Among those who appealed to the judge for leniency with these letters: were the late Alan Thicke, Tarran Killam, and James Marsden, who wrote “I assure you, what Brian has been through in the last month is the suffering of 100 men,” adding that he had known Mr. Peck since he was a teenager.
After reporting to court to find only his family in his corner, and Mr. Peck’s side “completely full” with a “who’s who?” of familiar faces, Mr. Bell said he simply looked at them and thought: “How dare you?”
He also states that Mr. Schneider was one of the only people there for him through this ordeal.
Mr. Bell was only inspired to reveal his sexual assault and agree to elicit a police-surveilled confession from Mr. Peck after incessant calls Mr. Peck would make to Mr. Bell’s girlfriend’s house; this was during a period where Mr. Peck was begging Mr. Bell to convince Mr. Schneider to cast him as the dad in “Drake & Josh.”
Notably, Mr. Schneider only grew emotional to the point of tears when revealing he actually helped Mr. Bell’s mother craft her statement to the court during Mr. Peck’s sentencing.
“We’re sitting in that courtroom on the wrong side of everything. The victim’s mother turned and said: ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you. And it doesn’t change what you did to my kid,’” former “Boy Meets World” star Will Friedle shared on “Pod Meets World.”
“We weren’t told the whole story, but it doesn’t change the fact that we did it … there’s an actual victim here. And he [Peck] turned us against the victim to where now we’re on his team.”
After his 16-month prison stint, Mr. Peck was hired onto Disney Channel’s “Suite Life of Zack and Cody” for three episodes of voice-over work—but was fired when executives caught wind of his record.
“Your instinct is to give someone the benefit of the doubt if you’ve known them for that long,” said “All That” cast member Kyle Sullivan.
The former actor lists child labor law ignorance, physically demanding sketches that went “overtime” and “overboard,” and “On-Air Dares” that mirrored “Fear Factor” with too much closeness for comfort, as some of his foremost traumas to this day.
Mr. Sullivan is also left forever baffled at the adult disregard that followed the most curious discovery he made during an “All That” party held at Mr. Peck’s residence, attended by crew, cast, and parents.
“To Brian, hope you enjoy the painting—your friend, John Wayne Gacy,” Mr. Sullivan, 14 at the time, read on the back of Mr.Gacy’s self-portrait, where Mr. Gacy is depicted as a birthday clown holding balloons. The painting was found on display in Mr. Peck’s bedroom.
Mr. Peck—who recurred on “All That” in 2002 as “Pickle Boy” while coaching the series’ young actors—was pen pals with executed child rapist and killer, John Wayne Gacy, and boastfully presented his painting and collection of Mr. Gacy letters to all on-hand when confronted.
“It was one of the classic failures of group psychology,” Mr. Sullivan said, “this man, who is entrusted as a supervisor of kids—is unsafe.”
Amongst others, “Quiet on Set” also tackles Jason Handy, an “Amanda Show” and “All That” production assistant who, too, “disappeared” when his pedophiliac endeavors came to light.
In his apology, Mr. Schneider denied ever possessing “final cut” power that superseded executives “on both coasts.”
He agrees the cringeworthy, gross-out humor these censors approved of—line-crossing gags that offend and harm more than they entertain upon revisitation—should be edited out.
Some of the more egregious scenes discussed in the documentary include one in which “Zoey 101” star Alexa Nikolas, 12, squirts a “green goop” on the face of series lead, Jamie Lynn Spears, 13; and bonus features on the now-defunct TheSlap.com—essentially Schneider’s means to upload scenes he knew would be too risque for broadcast—where a 16-year-old Ariana Grande attempts to “squeeze the juice out of a potato” and pours water on herself in-character as her “Victorious” and “Sam & Cat” persona.
Ms. Grande is depicted in both an overtly sexualized, and infantilizing manner in these clips Ms. Nikolas—who runs the “Eat Predators” movement, which aims to combat abuses and cover-ups in the entertainment industry—told IndieWire she “literally had to be asked if she was 18” to view on YouTube.
“Quiet on Set” attempts to connect Mr. Schneider’s involvement with 16-year-old Amanda Bynes’ ultimately unsuccessful attempt to emancipate from her parents, with Mr. Peck’s pervertedly motivated methods in separating Mr. Bell from his own.
“There was never any mishandling of any funds,” said Bell, “but it was an army against my dad.”
At the time, Mr. Schneider had developed a megalomania-revealing proclivity on “All That” and “The Amanda Show” to counteract the “kids running the asylum” reputation his shows exuded.
He would portray himself as a Godlike star-maker who commands respect and obedience from his child actors, “... or else.”
In one instance, a fully clothed Schneider sits beside a bikini-clad, teenaged Ms. Bynes in a hot tub, declaring that he wrote all their dialogue addressing the oddity—and that she better just get along with it.
This has left fans troubled, considering Ms. Bynes’ abrupt retirement from acting in 2010, and persistent mental health struggles thereafter that have resulted in her being placed in a conservatorship.
Nathan Kress and Jerry Trainor, of both “iCarly” iterations, unfollowed “iCarly” and Nickelodeon on all social media platforms after the release of “Quiet on Set.”
In signing off from Nick, they join former co-star Jennette McCurdy, whose 2022 memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died” intensified investigations into Mr. Schneider and Nickelodeon, making the documentary and the entirety of its revelations all the more possible.
“I finished the ‘Quiet On Set’ documentary and took a few days to process it. I reached out to Drake privately, but want to give my support for the survivors who were brave enough to share their stories of emotional and physical abuse on Nickelodeon sets with the world,” Josh Peck posted to Instagram on March 21.
This came after years of fallouts, rekindlings, then fallouts once more with his former co-star, Drake Bell.
Mr. Bell has gained a resurgence in popularity after revealing his sexual assault victimhood.
It was just two years ago he was vilified after pleading guilty to child endangerment himself; Mr. Bell admitted to sending inappropriate text messages to a female fan he later learned was only 15 years old.
“Children should be protected,” Mr. Peck added. “Reliving this publicly is incredibly difficult, but I hope it can bring healing for the victims and their families as well as necessary change to our industry.”
“When you look at having multiple child predators who worked at Nickelodeon, it raises some confusing questions on who to hold accountable,” Kate Taylor, of Business Insider, said in the documentary.
“I don’t think that you can blame Schneider for hiring Brian Peck, because he was not a registered sex offender when he hired him.
“Drake very explicitly does not blame Dan for any of this. But it’s very clear that the system has to take a look at if it’s doing enough to protect children.”
At the end of every episode, “Quiet on Set” provides an on-screen card: “In response to producers’ questions, Nickelodeon has stated it investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace.
“[We] have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”
In Mr. Schneider’s last big-screen outing, the 2002 hit “Big Fat Liar,” he pits Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes as creatively innovative beacons of innocence against Paul Giamatti’s power-hungry studio executive.
Mr. Schneider seemingly had no trouble crafting the latter’s volatile relationship with everyone around him, and knack for siphoning talent from youth, then taking all of the credit.
When a devastating blow hits their cause, Ms. Bynes—at the height of her fame, in her first of a string of major movie roles—cries, in Mr. Schneider’s own words, no less: “... [but] we have a witness!”
Mr. Giamatti’s conniving exec scoffs in reply, exclaiming the “No. 1 rule about Hollywood? Always get it in writing!”
Fast-forward two decades: plenty of witnesses, plenty of victims, have gone far beyond the page to finally tell their truths.
With the docuseries inspiring an overdue dialogue, perhaps it won’t take as long for future crackdowns to materialize—as everyone from wronged female writers in the 1990s to a begrudged cameraman in the mid-2010s, have aligned with former child stars in attesting: “... no one was allowed to say anything.”
Not until now.
All four episodes of “Quiet on Set” are available to stream on Max.
