If you’re like me, you’ve been (not so) patiently waiting for Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV to release. I binge watched it all last night and WOAH.
I personally grew up in the 90s, so I watched Nickelodeon DAILY! To say I was eager to watch this docu series would be a complete understatement. And having worked in TV/film for 15 years – 10 being in LA – it really struck a chord.
Here’s a lil description of the show in case you don’t know: Quiet on Set is a docu-series exposing the dark side of Nickelodeon back in the 90s and early 2000s. Many child actors come forward to expose the sexual and mental abuse of minors from the producers, execs and creators. Specifically Dan Schneider. But, there are actually multiple people involved who were a part of this horrific experience.
I am still digesting everything I learned from this series. There were many times I felt very uncomfortable. I am a crime doc addict, so I have seen some really rough shows that I can usually disconnect from. However, I think my personal connection to watching Nickelodeon nearly every day in the 90s made it too close to home. The added clips from shows I remember watching on “Snick” every Saturday night brought me right back to my childhood. And now knowing that was actually happening to those child actors just taints it all.
A slight disclaimer
If you have yet to watch this series, please understand the trigger warnings. This show is based on the pedophilia happening behind closed doors of Nickelodeon. It gets disturbing real quick and I will warn you: You will NOT be able to re-watch your fav Nickelodeon shows he same again. Watch at your own discretion.
The horrors behind the scenes
For those who want to watch it, I don’t want to spoil anything for you. Although it is pretty obvious what this series is exposing. But the details of it all are quite horrifying.
When I was watching the first two episodes, my jaw dropped countless times. Throughout the series, they re-play scenes from old episodes of shows like All That, The Amanda Bynes Show and Drake and Josh that are soooooooo inappropriate for minors.
Things like eating pickles with sexual undertones. Or Amanda Bynes with Dan Schneider in a hot tub together where she is in a bathing suit but he is fully clothed . Or Ariana Grande on her show ( I can’t remember what the show was called), holding a potato and her lines are, “Oooo I wonder how hard I have to squeeze this potato to get the juice out!” while making really awkward sexual noises. It was SO BAD.
There was even a show that was the “kids version of fear factor.” One of the child actors was forced to put peanut butter all over his body while a pack of dogs were released to lick the peanut butter off. Who on Earth said, “Yeah that’s a great idea!”
So, not only was the writing (who was none other than Dan Schneider), absolutely appalling, there were a lot of inappropriate interactions with the child actors behind the scenes. Such as massages, favoritism, wardrobe that exposed the child actors’ bodies, inappropriate friendships from adult crew members with the child actors… the list goes on.
Some unexpected cameos
I was surprised that there were so many child actors from various popular Nickelodeon shows who came on to speak about their experiences! None of the BIG “A-list” stars have showed up to share their experiences like Amanda Bynes, Ariana Grande, Keenan Thompson, or Jennette McCurdy. Although, we do get an entire episode focused on Drake Bell’s horrific experience. It’s preeeeetty rough, so buckle up for that on episode 3.
I was curious why Drake was the only A-list child star who came forward on this series. I have a theory about why those individuals have not fully come forward about this topic…
In episode 2, there is a lot of focus on how odd the relationship is between Amanda and Dan Schneider. Many crew members and cast members express that they felt it was weird but assumed there was always good intentions.
I think we all saw what happened with Amanda and her struggle with mental health that was very public. She has never spoken about her experience with the channel or Dan, which I find very sus. My assumption is she got the worst of it all. I feel its quite obvious.
That brings me to Jennette.. in her memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died,* she speaks about a certain person that she does not fully name who was mentally and sexually abusive to her and other cast members. She shares that she was offered $300k to not talk about her experience at Nickelodeon publicly but denied accepting because she called them out for using it as “hush money.” What was confusing though was that even though she denied the hush money, she still didn’t give specific names of who she had abusive experiences with.
So my theory is this: I think Amanda Bynes was also approached with hush money, but she actually took it. Therefore, she has never exposed Dan or any other crew members involved in the abuse. Not being able to speak about such horrific experiences can drastically effect your mental health and 100% cause a mental or psychotic break down. As we all know, she has had many.
Ironically enough, she is featured A LOT in this docu series as being a major focus of Dan’s. So it almost feels like Amanda has given full permission on the side to do this, and maybe feeding information to a third party in order to get around some contract she signed long ago to keep her mouth shut.
The connection between Amanda and Jennette as well as all the other A-list child stars is that there must have been something in their actual contract they signed to never speak of discrimination or abuse in the workplace.
Interesting right? Okay… conspiracy theory rant: over!
I won't "rate" this show...however:
I do feel there is something to be said with how well put together a docu series like this is. And I will say that the filmmakers behind it have done a great job with the material. The interviews look great, the writing is well done so we are never confused (some documentaries miss the ball on this one), and the presentation of content. This particular subject is extremely sensitive, and they did a great job of getting the point across, yet not being so graphic that it is not watchable.
In conclusion
This is a docu series that I will most likely watch again to better understand it all the second time through. There are a lot of names aside from Dan Schneider involved in the horrendous events that happened during that chunk of time. I went into it thinking this series would be only focused on exposing Dan and no one else, but there were several others.
There are two men who got charged with pedophilia, but it doesn’t seem to showcase that Dan ever got charged with anything. It’s pretty evident that many actors, parents and crew members were too scared to go against Dan due to his status with Nickelodeon.
Working in Hollywood, I have seen this dynamic dozens of times on set, and its devastating. My hope is that this series will shed some major light on the dark side of Kids TV so situations like these can stop happening.
