Quiet on Set: The Docuseries Alleging Toxic Culture on Nickelodeon Shows
“Unmasking the Sinister Side of Kid’s TV” explores the dark and disturbing side of popular children’s shows from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
After the first addition to the “Quiet on Set” series, the internet community dug out an old footage in which the teenager Amanda Bynes is seen bathing in a jacuzzi with the disgraced producer.
Dan Schneider’s alleged exploitation of Amanda Bynes
Eventually, he made it big when he produced The Amanda Show under the Nickelodeon network which happened to revolve around the happenings in the life of Amanda Bynes; a 13-year-old girl then. It was after seeing this that impressed him that Bynes was talented at portraying complicated characters, according to Vulture, so Schneider ended up assisting her run away from her home and gain emancipation, a move she later apologized for.
Following the launch of the documentary on March 17, online opinion leaders started looking into Amanda Bynes’ behavioral shifts and uncovered a video of her as a teenager “jacuzzi-ing” with the discredited producer. Virgil Fabian, the producer of The Amanda Show, alleges that Schneider’s part in Bynes’ life caused a rift between her and parents.
Nickelodeon’s statement on Schneider’s sexual misconduct allegations
As the backlash of the alleged sexual misconduct claims against Schneider began, Vulture received a public comment from Nickelodeon.
Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviours from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct.
Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crew, but of all children, and 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,
Sketches from All That and The Amanda Show featured “sexualized” references.
The documentary discloses that the characters’ name based on slang used in their days, which refer to the perineum, the area between the vulva and anus.
He [Schneider] came up with the name Penelope Taynt. The taint is the part of the body that’s between the penis and the anus,” Jenny Kilgen explained in the series. Kilgen claimed that Schneider told the writers, “Don’t tell what this word really means. He wanted us to keep that a secret.”
One of the characters from All That is Pickle Boy and this role was played by former actor and convicted sex offender Brian Peck. The tagline of Pickle Boy was that he “likes to hurt and tease pickles.” Apart from that Peck wandered around the sets with a carrot, and ate it, which made the kids on the set quite anxious. Nevertheless, the actors dismissed it as one of the “Schneider’s quirks”.
Dialogue Coach Brian Peck Sexually Assaulted Drake Bell
Now, Drake Bell, the one time star of Drake & Josh is becoming the first one to address being sexually assaulted by dialogue coach Brian Peck when he was only 15.
In 1999, Bell won the job of acting in the show of Nickelodeon named The Amanda Show. The following year, it was the first day of the series’ second season. During that time, Bell met Brian Peck, an actor-trainer, to whom Bell looked up and went on to his house for tutorials.
“I was sleeping on the couch where I usually sleep and I woke up to him… I opened my eyes and I woke up and he was…he was sexually assaulting me,” Bell says in the docuseries. “And I froze, and was in complete shock and had no idea what to do or how to react.”
The Amanda Show child actor’s mother opens up on daughter’s sexual misconduct
Brandi, a mother of a former Amanda Show child actor, has talking out on the sexual harassment her daughter endured from Jason Handy, a sex offender when he was convicted.
Brandi instantly started getting emails from the former The Amanda Show production assistant after one week from shooting. At the very beginning everything was quite usual because the mother even did not feel anything abnormal. “She let me read it. It was very innocent. It just talked about the shows that he had been working on.”
Only a few months had passed, and straight out of the blue, Handy mailed a picture of himself masturbating that was naked. The mother’s recall brought back the memory.
Brandi] was sitting at the computer, and all of a sudden, I noticed she had suddenly shut down the computer completely and got up and ran into her bedroom and slammed the bedroom door shut.