Trigger Warning: This article contains subjects regarding abuse and sexual harassment.  

A number of streaming platforms such as HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and more have released the documentary titled “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV”, produced by Maxine Productions and Sony Pictures Television.  

Rapidly, this documentary has been gaining much attention for showing the world what really went on behind the scenes of child shows such as “All That,” “The Amanda Show,” “Drake and Josh,” “Zoey 101,” “iCarly,” “Victorious,” and “Sam and Cat.” 

The beginning of this documentary begins with the statement: “This series investigates the abuses experienced by children from the adults they were expected to trust. Viewer discretion is advised.” 

I would like to warn readers of the possibility of trigger warnings found in this review as well. 

Episode one of the documentary introduces Dan Schneider, the creator of Nickelodeon’s biggest shows, such as “All That,” “The Amanda Show,” “Drake and Josh,” “Zoey 101,” “iCarly,” “Victorious,” and “Sam and Cat.” Schinder began his career doing small roles. After playing the role of Dennis Blunden and co-writer for the show, “Head of the Class”, Schneider was contacted by a Nickelodeon executive and was asked to write and produce “All That”, a show that first launched in 1994.  

Kate Taylor, a journalist for Business Insider, describes “All That” as “a pretty big hit for Nickelodeon where they went from, like, a pretty scrappy production to getting some of the biggest names in entertainment to be these guests.”  

Due to his role in these shows, Schneider rapidly gained attention and fame for his work. He went on to produce highly recognizable shows such as “Kenan & Kel,” “The Amanda Show,” “Drake and Josh,” “Zoey 101,” “iCarly,” “Victorious,” and “Sam and Cat.” 

Through these shows, Schneider launched the careers of many celebrities, with some of them being Amanda Bynes, Drake Bell, Jamie Lynn Spears, Miranda Cosgrove, and Ariana Grande. However, not all of the children he worked with had positive experiences with him.  

Taylor says, “For decades, Dan seemed like he was untouchable. But around 2017, the internet videos around Dan really started gaining momentum. There are all these setups that referenced porn.”  

Viewers also began to notice how a great number of scenes, character names, and wardrobes were extremely inappropriate for a child, many of these having sexual related content. Some examples include squirting liquids or material on an actor’s face, having children dress in short skirts and bras, and remarks towards genitals. Recently, a number of the child actors have decided to speak out about their experiences with Schneider, with some of them being introduced in the first episode.  

Leon Frierson and Katrina Johnson are two of the children who starred in the show “All That”. In the documentary, Frierson expresses how he was uncomfortable when it came to having to wear leotards that showed his private parts and he describes feeling exposed and judged.  

Frierson expresses his feelings stating, “I’m just looking back at it, it’s just very strange. Frankly, it was just uncomfortable. In the moments to myself, you would just be thinking, like “Hey this is what we gotta do to be on the show. To stay in the cast and stay in the good graces of the people that were higher up.”” 

Katrina Johnson, a child who was on “All That” from the age of 10 to 16, also shared her experience with Schneider. She mentions how Schneider was her mentor and was always with her for auditions and practices. Johnson stated how Schneider would begin to criticize her appearance, tell her she was fat, and needed to lose weight. Soon enough, Johnson began to go through puberty and that’s when she felt as if Schneider pushed her away more, in order to find a much younger girl who did not look like a grown woman. This eventually led him to finding one of Nickelodeon’s biggest stars, Amanda Bynes.  

Bynes was brought onto “All That” in 1994 when she was 8 years old. During her time on the show, one of her co-stars Frierson noticed that Schneider would always be around her.  

He says, “We had to go to school on set. And so there would be times where Amanda would just be missing. And a lot of times we would just hear that she would be with Dan, pitching ideas and writing. We’ve seen them grow closer to each other on set.” 

Eventually, Schneider created a new show where Bynes would be the main character. This show was called “The Amanda Show.” 

Rapidly, Bynes became hugely successful, with many awards in the Kids’ Choice Awards. “The Amanda Show” became a favorite for a number of children and introduced actors such as Raquel Lee Bolleau and Drake Bell.  

Not only was Schneider producing and behaving in questionable ways in the presence of the child actors, but he also treated his workers poorly, specifically the women. Jenny Kilgen and Christy Stratton are two writers from “The Amanda Show” who were hired and given one salary to share between the both of them. Kilgen describes her time with Schneider and mentions how Schneider would show porn on his screen, joke about being massaged, and made Stratton bend over a desk and act as if she was being sodomized, while she talked about high school. When asked to talk about it, Stratton refused to bring up the situation. However, Kilgen expresses how it was wrong for a woman to be put in that situation. Soon after, Schneider fired Startton and Kilgen quit as she refused being the only woman working with Schneider. Kilgen ended up suing Schneider for gender discrimination, with the documents mentioning exploitation, denial of equal pay, sexually hostile work environment, pornography, and illegal retaliation.  

Culture writer, Scaachi Koul, ends the first episode with the following: “How safe can any kids be in that environment if that’s how the adult women are being treated behind the scenes? And on Dan’s shows there was always this kind of, murkiness in what was appropriate and what was inappropriate. But there would be even bigger problems down the line with actual pedophiles on set.” 

The beginning of Episode 2 focuses on Bynes’s journey into adulthood. As she became a teenager, Bynes looked towards working in projects that steered away from children shows. Schneider tried to stick with her and be in charge of shows that she joined, however he eventually left and returned to Nickelodeon after failing to work together with other show creators and playing a role in trying to get Bynes emancipated, which is something her parents were strongly against. 

When he returns to Nickelodeon, he creates a whole new cast for “All That”.  

Bryan Christopher Hearne was a child who starred in seasons 7 and 8 of “All That”. During his time working with Schneider, Hearne expresses how he felt like he was treated differently compared to the white kids. Schneider would create scenes where Hearne would be portrayed as if he was a drug dealer and an instance where he was a fetus rapper. In order to make it seem like Hearne was a fetus, members had to make a bodysuit that would need to match his hands and face skin tone. When matching the bodysuit to his skin tone, a member maliciously mentions how the suit should be charcoal. 

Hearne says, “My time on Nickelodeon played a big part in how I dealt, and still deal, with racial slurs.”  

There were also instances where he and other child actors were forced to do dares on “The On Air Dares”. One of the dares he had to do was be completely covered in peanut butter and have dogs lick it off his body. He explains how uncomfortable he was and how it seemed like it was a fantasy from a creep.  

He says, “I didn’t need to have dogs lick the peanut butter off. Jack didn’t need to be submerged in a pool of worms. I don’t think that any of that was necessary.” 

Ultimately, Schneider decided not to invite him back for the ninth season, which negatively affected Hearne.  

During his time working on “All That” workers describe Schneider as being mean, loud, verbally abusive, and extremely demanding and degrading.  

At the time, a crime had also come out on the news. Jason Handy, the production assistant for “All That”, was arrested when police had been tipped off with information about Handy’s behavior with children. When police searched his home, they found over 10,000 images of children with many of them including young girls in erotic poses and bondage activity.  

Four months later, a second member of the crew was arrested. Dialogue and acting coach, Brian Peck, was charged with molestation.  

Episode three is thus far the most disturbing and horrific episode of the series, in my opinion. For the third episode, viewers learn about the experiences of the actor, Drake Bell, specifically what he went through with a Nickelodeon dialogue and acting coach.  

Bell began his acting career when his father, Joe Bell, had seen an advertisement for the Kids Hollywood Connection. Over time, Bell went from playing guest roles, to commercials, and finally to his big break working on “The Amanda Show”.  

During his time on “The Amanda Show”, Bell describes it as being fun and enjoyable. He enjoyed being a part of the show and working with his co-stars. However, when production moved to Nickelodeon on Sunset to film the second season of “The Amanda Show”, everything changed.  

At the time of the second season, Brian Peck, a dialogue and acting coach, joined the team. At first, Bell enjoyed talking with Brain Peck because he knew so much history about Hollywood. 

When reflecting on this time period, Bell says, “Brian and I became really close because we had a lot of the same interests. Which, looking back, I think that was probably a little calculated.”  

After some time, Peck slowly got closer to Bell and offered to help him land other jobs and give him acting lessons, however this would have to be at his home. Joe Bell agreed, however he made sure to always be at an eye distance from them and never left his son alone.  

Joe Bell describes how he would always want to keep an eye on his son and soon noticed how Peck would always want to be around his son, often times going to his dressing room and helping him change into wardrobe.  He would put his hand on his shoulder and run it down his arm or have his arms around his waist, which made the dad extremely uncomfortable. He went to production and told them he was uncomfortable with Peck always being around his son and expressed having a weird feeling.  

The response he was given was “Oh well, I don’t know if you knew it or not, but he’s gay. Maybe you’re just homophobic and you just don’t understand he’s a touchy-feely guy.” He remained uncomfortable with the situation and told people on set, soon enough he was ostracized. 

There was a gap between the end of “The Amanda Show” and Schneider’s next production of working on the newest show, “Drake and Josh.” 

During this time, Joe Bell noticed that Peck would frequently try to be around his son. When Joe Bell had concerts, Peck would drive miles to go see him, for example the ones he had in San Diego. In one event, Peck and his friends watched Bell and followed him around. For his birthday, Peck offered to host birthday parties for Bell at his home. His father took notice of everything and refused to leave his son alone with Peck. 

Peck did not like this and would often try to convince Bell to fire his father from being his manager.  

Bell says, “I think Brian got a sense that my dad was on the watch and so he started to really drive a wedge between my dad and me. He started talking about how my dad’s stealing my money, nobody likes that my dad’s on set, he’s a real problem. So, he just started making me believe that he was horrible for my career, I wasn’t going to be able to move forward with him in it. And coming from someone like Brian I was believing it because he’s been in this business for so long and he must know more than us.” 

Ultimately, the dad was fired as the manager because Peck had got to Drake and Drake’s mom’s head. Joe Bell was heartbroken and felt like his relationship with his son was going to deteriorate.  

He accepted stepping down from being his son’s manager and gave the bank accounts and paperwork to the mother, leaving her with a notice: “But you never ever leave Drake alone with Brian Peck, and you never let him be around him unsupervised, period, whatsoever.”  

Over time, Peck became the one who would play the role that Bell’s father had. When it came to auditions, Peck would be driving Bell to Los Angeles, as Bell’s mom would not want to drive her son. To avoid driving back and forth the next day, Bell would often times have to sleepover at Peck’s house.  

Bell did not think anything would ever happen to him, however one morning everything changed.  

With difficulty, Bell describes the following, “I was sleeping on the couch where I would usually sleep. And, uh… I woke up to him… uh…I opened my eyes, woke up and he was, uh… he was sexually assaulting me.” He mentions how he was incomplete shock and did not know how to react or how to get out of the situation. He was 15 years old at the time and didn’t know how to process what had happened.  

At first, Peck apologized and told him it would never happen again. However, Bell mentions that it became worse, and he felt trapped. He was too scared to say “no” when invited to Peck’s house for lessons. 

Bell continues to describe his abuse as “extensive” and “pretty brutal”.  

When asked more about it, he says, “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. I don’t know how else to put it. It was not a one-time thing.” Bell continues saying he doesn’t know how he was able to experience all the traumatic events and survive. He held on to the hope that one day it would stop.  

Bell was taken to therapy when his girlfriend’s mom noticed how weird it was that Peck continued to call Bell, asking him to spend time together. During therapy, Bell refused to say what was going on. He feared that, if he spoke out, Peck would retaliate and prevent him from ever acting again.  

However, one day Bell finally broke and told his mom what was going on. His mom immediately called the police and they arrived at their home. He was asked to give as much details as possible and asked to call Peck and get a confession out of him.  

Peck gave a full confession over the phone, and he ended up being arrested. On his charges there are mentions of lewd and lascivious acts with a child 14 or 15 years of age, sodomy, forcible penetration, using a foreign object, employment of a minor for pornography, and oral copulation with a minor under 16 years of age.  

When Bell calls his dad to tell him Peck was arrested for molestation, the dad was glad he was taken away and his son would be safe. He believed Peck did not harm his son.  

However, he learned the horrible truth and explains, “I’m not the same today. The pain’s still there from the moment that I knew. It’s just that I don’t wish this on any parent or child whatsoever. It’s just devastating.” 

The fourth episode begins with Bell having to go to court for Peck’s sentencing. 

During court, Bell vividly remembers the immense amount of people who supported and defended Peck. A total of 41 letters of support were given to the judge, asking for a small sentence, probation, and even mentioning that maybe Peck was pressured and tempted. James Marsden, Taran Killam, Alan Thicke, Thomas Desanto, Ron Melendez, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle are a number of the people who wrote letters of support for Peck.  

After serving sixteen months in prison, Peck was released and began to work in the entertainment industry once again. For a short time, he worked on the set of “Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” but he was fired when Disney realized the charges he had.  

Nickelodeon continued to fail the children, by hiring a prior sex offender Ezell Channel. Channel ended up being arrested after abusing a child on a lot of a set.  

With the events of Handy, Peck, and Channel, Nickelodeon began to do background checks on the people who were being hired. However, nobody knew who to blame for all the atrocious and disgusting events that had already happened to a number of children working for Nickelodeon.  

After the arrests of all these men, Nickelodeon continued to grow and expand. Schneider became more powerful and famous for his new shows such as “iCarly”, “Victorious”, and “Sam and Cat”. As Disney Channel became competition, with shows such as “Hannah Montana” and “Suite Life of Zack and Cody”, Nickelodeon “turned to” Schneider. 

With the web becoming popular, Schneider began to film videos behind the scenes of shows. In a number of these videos, Schneider invades people’s personal space, often times making the actors uncomfortable.  However, to avoid being on Schneider’s bad side, actors put up with it.  

Schneider continued to produce scenes where he would sexualize the children.  

“There are jokes about being slapped with a sausage. There’s a joke about being on the wood. You have actors shaking weights in a way that seems very clearly sexual and these actors, for the most part, are minors”, says Taylor. One can vividly see the sexual references that can be found throughout shows such as “Victorious” and “iCarly”, especially with Ariana Grande who was recorded in an extremely “sexual manner”. 

Due to how stressful the situation got on set of “Sam and Cat”; Nickelodeon launched an investigation. After the investigation Schneider was not allowed to have direct contact with the cast. 

In 2017, three years since Schneider was banned from working directly with the actors of “Sam and Cat”, he returns to work on two new shows: “Henry Danger” and “Game Shakers”.  However, there was sudden halt during this time that changed how people viewed hostile work environments; the MeToo movement allowed people to come forward about Schneider’s abusive and taunting behavior.  

A second investigation began, and Schneider ended up being released from Nickelodeon due to evidence found of his abusive behavior. 

Although Schneider has mentioned wanting to return, many wish he doesn’t.  

“A lot of his shows are still on the air and they’re still really popular, but those kids who grew up on Dan Schnider’s sets and in the entertainment, industry are adults now, and they are reexamining the world that they grew up in.” says culture writer, Koul. 

The documentary finalizes with all the child actors giving their final statements; they reflect on their time working on Nickelodeon, the situations they were put through, how they dealt with their experiences and its impact, and how important it is to keep children safe and make sure that a work environment does not have all of these elements that can harm someone.  

After finishing this documentary, I began to reminisce on how much I enjoyed watching these Nickelodeon shows, especially “Drake and Josh” and “Victorious.” I never would have imaged the horrific and hostile environment and situations that many of these child actors were put through. As a child, I never noticed the sexual references that were shown. However, as an adult I can clearly see how wrong many of the scenes were. These shows were children shows, made by children and there should have never been such creepy and disgusting references and sexualization. Although some adults did try to stop and help, there are many more who did not protect these child stars from experiencing what they went through. The innocent and vulnerable children were let down and left to suffer, both physically and mentally.