Quiet on the Set features allegations of abuse, sexism, racism and inappropriate behavior involving underage stars and crewmembers on Nickelodeon series overseen by Dan Schneider.
Drake Bell is the biggest former child actor to allege toxic workplaces at Nickelodeon while performing on Dan Schneider’s hit TV shows as part of Investigation Discovery’s docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
Bell shares his story of alleged abuse by Brian Peck, his former dialogue coach who was convicted of sexually assaulting a Nickelodeon child actor in 2004.
Bell is not alone.
The four-part series probes the toxic environment claims on sets run by Schneider, who created Nickelodeon hit programs like The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, iCarly, Victorious and Sam & Cat and helped launch the careers of Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes, Victoria Justice, Miranda Cosgrove, Jennette McCurdy.
Quiet on the Set premieres across two nights on ID on March 17 and 18.
Dan Schneider ran or tolerated toxic work conditions on his hit shows at Nickelodeon.
Former crew members who worked with Dan Schneider on or behind the camera claim they endured toxic workplaces. “Working for Dan was like being in abusive relationship,” Christy Stratton, one of only two women writers on The Amanda Show along with Jenny Kilgen, told the docuseries.
What’s more, Stratton and Kilgen had to split normal staff writer salary to get hired. It wasn’t long before being told by Schneider “he didn’t think women were funny: “He challenged us to name a funny female writer, and he said this to the writers in the writers room.”
Schneider allegedly had pornography up on his computer screen and told her he’d put one of her sketches in the show in return for massage. “He always presented it like a joke. But you always felt like disagreeing with Dan, or standing up for yourself, could get you fired,” Kilgen claimed.
Schneider one day in the writers room asked Stratton to lean across her desk and simulate being sodomized. “I would not do that today, but I did it then,” an embarrassed Stratton says on camera.
Toxic workplaces in Hollywood are not new, but Nickelodeon stood out for having many vulnerable child actors.
Kid actors were made to wear suggestive costumes and take part in inappropriate sketches full of physical comedy and hinting at pornographic undertones.
Leon Frierson was part of seasons 4 through 6 of All That, which also starred a young Amanda Bynes. Frierson recalled playing the character of Captain Big Nose in a superhero costume of tights and underwear. Besides his prosthetic nose attached, Frierson had matching noses on his shoulders. “You can’t help but notice that it looks like penises and testicles on my shoulders.” And as part of the sketch comedy, Captain Big Nose unleashed a giant sneeze due to his allergy to asteroids. The result was a messy goo left on the face of a young woman in his path. “The joke in that sketch is effectively a cum shot joke. It’s a cum shot joke for children,” Schaachi Koul, culture writer, says in the first episode.
“It was uncomfortable. In the moment, I thought this is what we got to do to stay on the show, to stay in the cast and in the good graces of people that were higher up,” Frierson added.
That specifically meant doing right by Dan Schneider. “Being close to Dan could mean an extra level of success. It was important to be on his good side, and he made it known who was on his good side,” he insisted.
Former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell tells his alleged abuse by Brian Peck when he was only 14.
The third episode of Quiet on Set centers on Drake Bell recounting how he was groomed and suffered alleged sexual abuse at the hands of Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck.
In 2003, Peck was accused of molesting a child and was subsequently convicted of a lewd act against a child and oral copulation of a person under 16, for which he spent 16 months in prison.
Bell, then only a minor at 15 years of age and the star of Nickelodeon shows like All That and The Amanda Show, was at the center of that criminal case and conviction. He recounted waking one morning while on Peck’s living room couch. “I woke up, opened my eyes, and he was sexually assaulting me. I froze and was in complete shock. I had no idea what to do or how to react,” Bell recounted.
Peck manipulated Bell’s mother and others to allow himself free reign with a minor. “It just got worse and worse, and I was just trapped and I had no way out,” Bell added. It was only when the mother of Bell’s then girlfriend questioned why Peck wouldn’t stop calling him that Bell sought therapy but was still not ready to share his secret.
It’s a theme many now adult actors claim about their childhood on Nickelodeon shows: If they spoke up for themselves, or had parents do so on their behalf, they feared retribution and never being able to work again.
But eventually in 2003, Bell did talked to the police after telling his mother. “I’ve no idea what provoked it, but I just screamed into the phone everything that had happened to me,” Bell said. He recalled a “brutal” interview with two detectives and having to call Peck to get him to admit his guilt on a tapped phone. He did, with full confession.
After Peck’s arrest, Bell recalled a phone call from Dan Schneider asking if the case had anything to do with him? “I was close enough with Dan, ‘Yeah, man, this is what he’s been doing.’ Dan just goes, ‘You don’t need to talk anymore about it. That’s all I needed to hear. Are you okay? Do you need anything from me. Anything you need,’” Bell told the doc series.
When asked whether other Nickelodeon execs reached out to him, Bell made excuses: “I’m not really sure how many people knew who it was. It wasn’t really brought up to me a lot, maybe because it was a sensitive subject. But the only person that I remember being there for me was Dan.” Bell would eventually headline his own series, Drake & Josh, on Nickelodeon.
In a statement, Nickelodeon said, “Now that Drake Bell has disclosed his identity as the plaintiff in the 2004 case, we are dismayed and saddened to learn of the trauma he has endured, and we commend and support the strength required to come forward.”
As Schneider grew more powerful as a kids TV producer, his relationships apparently worsened to the point of alleged abuse, the series claims. “He would come down and yell and scream. There were many times I had to say, you’re creating an atmosphere on this set that is not healthy,” All That director Virgil Fabian alleges in Quiet on the Set‘s second episode. That toxicity extended to the edit suite. Karyn Finley Thompson, an editor on All That, The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh, claimed she and others in production had little life outside work when working with Schneider. “You didn’t eat. You didn’t go to the bathroom. Dan would be, ‘Wait! Wait a minute! Hold it. Can you wait a minute?’“ And she’d give in to the incessant demands. “We all did it, or you got fired,” Thompson added. She recalled one day keeling over in the edit suite and having to go to the hospital. “As I’m leaving and curled over, I could hear someone saying, ‘How is this show going to get finished?’ And I remember just saying, ‘I’ll be right back!’”
It took the #MeToo movement to stop Schneider in his tracks at Nickelodeon, not internal control.
After the #MeToo movement, Schneider and Nickelodeon finally parted ways following years of whispers and rumors. Before that, the network in 2014 launched an internal investigation into workplace conditions on the Sam & Kat, which starred Ariana Grande and Jennette McCurdy. The result was Schneider, ever the hands-on showrunner, having to stop interacting with the series cast and stay in his office. That eased any alleged toxicity on set, while also keeping Schneider, the money maker, in the Nickelodeon tent where he created two more shows, Game Shakers and Henry Danger. Until 2017 and Hollywood’s reckoning with hostile workplaces and sexual harassment and assault accusations against Harvey Weinstein and others, “a lot of rumors were circulating around Dan Schneider, and these really exploded online,” Business Insider writer Kate Taylor tells the series in the fourth episode. And a second internal investigation by Nickelodeon, while clearing Schneider of any hint of sexual misconduct, led to his exit in 2018. “It did find evidence of being abusive to others in the workplace,” Taylor reports. The network changed the locks at the Nickelodeon on Sunset facility, where Schneider ran his empire. “Let’s collectively please not let another Dan happen. He cannot happen again. This is not a joke,” Alexa Nikolas, a Zoey 101 cast member says.
Schneider shared a statement, which airs at the end of the series: “Everything that happened on the shows I ran was carefully scrutinized by dozens of adults. All stories, dialogue, costumes, and makeup were fully approved by network executives on two coasts. A standards and practices group read and ultimately approved every script, and programming executives reviewed and approved all episodes. In addition, every day on set, there were always parents and caregivers watching us rehearse and film.”
