Quiet on Set: how Nickelodeon failed to protect its child actors

In the 2000s, there was perhaps no network that created as many beloved children's TV shows as Nickelodeon. 

Popular sitcoms included iCarly, Zoey 101, Sam and Cat and Drake and Josh. These were shows kids and tweens loved because they were fun and weren't afraid to showcase silly or messy storylines. 

Dan Schneider, a screenwriter and producer at Nickelodeon, wrote most of these hit TV shows. He was hailed as a mastermind at the network and was responsible for launching the careers of teen stars like Ariana Grande, Jennette McCurdy and Drake Bell.

Over the years, former Nickelodeon stars have come out with allegations of abuse, including iCarly star McCurdy. She wrote in her memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died that the network offered her a payout to keep quiet about her experiences on the set of iCarly.

Now, there's a new documentary by Investigation Discovery called Quiet on Set that unveils what it was like behind the scenes at these beloved kids TV shows. The documentary raises questions about the ethics of kids TV and how to protect young people in Hollywood.

Joining host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Commotion to talk more about these new revelations are Scaachi Koul and Michael Seater. Koul was involved in the production of Quiet on Set and Seater is a producer, director and former child actor. He played Derek from the hit Canadian teen comedy Life With Derek.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus a BONUS EPISODE on how the new changes to the Griffin Poetry Prize might be hurting Canadian poets, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Scaachi, I'm going to start with you on this one. You were involved in the making of the documentary. The main character of the documentary is Dan Schneider. He became one of the most influential voices in children's entertainment over the course of his career. You might call him Nickelodeon's golden boy behind the scenes. But we see in this documentary, allegations of this toxic work environment from people who worked with them. Can you tell us a little bit of what happened on his sets?    

Scaachi: The allegations around Dan Schneider really run the gamut from people who are in the writers room — adults who worked on the production all the way down to children who were working in production. So on the adult side, there was a lot of stuff around how he wasn't paying his female writers a liveable wage. He made two female writers split one salary. There's a lot of sexual harassment. He asked child actors and adults in the writers room alike to give him massages. 

On the children's side, there's a lot of talk around weird racist skits that some of these kids were asked to do, especially the Black kids who are on set. Also, there were a lot of weird sexual innuendo jokes and a lot of touching of the child actors that they didn't seem to want. And then what was really potent when I was looking at it, were all of these digital shorts that these very young actresses had to do where they're kind of in these weird sexualised positions that are half masked by jokes, like Ariana Grande trying to massage a potato. There's another one where Grande is pouring water on her body. Elamin, we're adults, we know what's happening there. But for kids, they don't necessarily have a skill for knowing what's going on. But it's so odd that this adult in the room was putting these kids in that position for years.

Elamin: It feels very uncomfortable that a major network would be like, "Sure, Dan Schneider, by all means, shoot this weird digital exclusive." 

Scaachi: I think they were letting him run with a lot. I think that a lot of the kids on set knew that this stuff was not appropriate and they didn't have the mechanism for saying anything. I talk about this in the doc that if you're going to run a children's show and if you're going to deal with child actors, you need to make sure that the most vulnerable person on set, which is usually a child, feels abundantly comfortable to tell the most powerful person on set that she's not comfortable. That was not an environment that clearly was being made at Nickelodeon.

Elamin: Michael, you've been on these sets since you were about eight years old, did any of these stories come as a surprise for you?

Michael: For me and for my peers, I don't know of any stories of this kind of assault and sexual misconduct and those types of things. I was very lucky to have a very good experience. Watching this documentary was very difficult. It made me really grateful that I was able to do one kid's show after another in Canada but maintain this normalcy in my life that I feel like doesn't exist in the American system. 

I think it's a very hard environment for kids because there's a lot of pressure on them. In my time, workplace safety was often an issue. But I had a lot of really great showrunners who understood that they were dealing with kids. It doesn't mean an undue amount of pressure isn't put on them. I think that just sort of goes with the territory. And some kids are built for it and some aren't. And some are in a position where they can't just step away because they feel that they have the burden of keeping the family finances going. And so I know lots of kids who were like, "You know what? This isn't for me." And they left, but other kids came from a socioeconomic background where they felt they had to do it.

Elamin: I just want to remind people that Nickelodeon had so much faith in Dan Schneider in this particular era. He could really do no wrong. And they just let him have however many freedoms he kept on asking for because the shows were doing well. His shows are so popular with young people. 

One of the most powerful and really difficult moments of the series is when Drake Bell tells his story publicly for the first time about how he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a dialogue coach from the sets of one of the Nickelodeon shows. Scaachi, what did his story tell us about the protections that did exist, if any at all, for young people on these sets?

Scaachi: Yeah, there are no protections. Children are not built to have these self-protective measures. You don't get them until you're a lot older. They are children. And there is a reason why people tend to get away with things with kids because kids are not built to actually say something. But to go back to what we were talking about before, these are kids who are also responsible for the economic futures of their entire families in a lot of cases.

So how would you as a child be able to say something is happening? I know it's making me uncomfortable. There's a steady creep to abuse like this. It doesn't happen overnight. There's no way to say, "I got to get out of here" because you might be responsible for the mortgage.

Elamin: The Hollywood Reporter published a sit-down interview with Dan Schneider where he apologised for his behaviour and denied some of the allegations that came up in the documentary. Scaachi, when you watch that, what did you make of his response? 

Scaachi: I don't make anything of it. I'm so sorry to hear his heart hurt for 25 years of recorded behaviour. You can't say "I am running the show and every decision goes through me" but then when things get complicated and there are allegations around your behaviour and the behaviour of other people that you are saying you hired and you're responsible for, you don't then get to say, "I had no idea." Either run it or don't. That's how this works. You either are responsible for it or you're not. Which one is it?

Elamin: Michael, when you saw the Dan Schneider video, I think that's like a 20 minute video of him sort of talking about this documentary. Did you have any response to it, watching him revisit some of these allegations?

Michael: He seems to just say, "I could have been a better boss," but it's also like, what were you writing? He put really twisted, messed up fetishes of his own into these programs. All the foot stuff, all of the — I don't know how I'm allowed to say it — ejaculation shots on faces. If you're going to apologise, you need to own all of that and say, "I'm actually checking myself into a facility of some kind to deal with the fact that I think this is okay." 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Amelia Eqbal