“Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV”: 5 takeaways
The Investigation Discovery documentary “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” is a four-part series about working at Nickelodeon, including the environment under former producer Dan Schneider, and what some described as harmful situations that child actors and adult employees were put in. It premiered March 17 and is streaming on Max.
Schneider, who parted ways with Nickelodeon in 2018, doesn’t appear in the docuseries, but former writers, child stars, staffers and journalists paint a picture of the environment at the network starting in the 1990s, through his departure.
Schneider responded to the series in a video last Tuesday. “Watching over the past two nights was very difficult, me facing my past behaviors, some of which are embarrassing and that I regret, and I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” Schneider said in a nearly 20-minute video posted to his Youtube channel.
In response to producers’ questions, the documentary said, Nickelodeon stated that the network “investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace” and has “adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”
Here are the biggest takeaways from the series.
Drake Bell publicly speaks about his abuse for the first time.
Brian Peck, a dialogue coach for Nickelodeon, was convicted of sexually abusing “Drake & Josh” star Jared Drake Bell. Peck was arrested in 2003 in connection with the sexual abuse of a teenager over a fourmonth period. In 2004, Peck pleaded no contest to two felonies, according to public records. At the time of the abuse, Bell was 15 and Peck was 41; in court documents, Bell was identified as John Doe.
This is the first time Bell has publicly detailed his experience.
Bell describes meeting Peck on set and becoming friendly with him. “Brian and I became very close because he had a lot of shared interests,” Bell noted. “Which, looking back, seems calculated.”
It was Bell’s father, Joe Bell, who first felt that something was inappropriate about Peck’s interest, Joe says in “Quiet on Set.” And when he took his concerns to producers, he says, they dismissed him by saying that Peck was gay so maybe Joe was homophobic.
Joe contends that Peck could sense his suspicions, and Peck purposely drove a wedge between the father and son, telling Bell that his father was stealing his money and shouldn’t be his manager anymore.
Bell said the abuse began when Peck offered to drive him to his auditions, since his mother didn’t like to drive. He would have multiple days of auditions in a row, he said, and Peck would suggest that Bell stay over at his house.
One day, when he was 15, he said, he woke up on a couch and was being sexually assaulted by Peck.
Brian Peck had widespread support from Hollywood figures.
Kyle Sullivan, a former cast member on “All That,” said that Peck was beloved despite there being some red flags: He played Pickle Boy, a recurring character on several Nickelodeon shows, in skits that some viewed as having sexual undertones.
When Peck was arrested, Sullivan said, producers gathered cast members together after a table read to tell them. Most were shocked.
At Peck’s sentencing hearing, Drake Bell said, Peck’s side of the courtroom was filled with supporters, whereas on Bell’s side, he just had his parents.
The documentary series also recounts that celebrities — including actors James Marsden, Alan Thicke and Taran Killam — had written letters of support for Peck. The husband-wife directing duo Beth and Rich Correll also wrote a letter in support of Peck, and worked with him on a Disney Channel series, “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” after his conviction.
Some of the people who wrote letters of support for Peck had previously said that they regretted writing them.
Others, like “X-men” producer Tom Desanto, told People in a statement in an article last week, “I want to personally apologize to Drake and his family and emphatically state that had I been fully informed of all the accusations, my support would have been absolutely withheld.”
Joanna Kerns, an actor on “Growing Pains,” told producers of “Quiet on Set,” “Knowing what I know now, I never would have written it.”
The Corrells said in a statement to the producers that they “had no input or involvement in the casting” of Peck on “The Suite Life.” They said that when they asked Peck about the case, he “simply replied that ‘the problem had been resolved.’”
Two others who worked at Nickelodeon were convicted of sexual offenses.
The mother of one child actor, Brandi, who was on “All That,” recounts meeting Jason Handy, a production assistant who was mostly in charge of accompanying the young cast members and their parents around set. The mother, identified only as MJ, says that Handy asked for her daughter’s email address and that he eventually sent her a photo of himself naked and masturbating.
Though MJ didn’t report this to police, she said, authorities learned about another instance of inappropriate behavior and when they searched Handy’s house, they found a large amount of child sexual abuse imagery — 10,000 images of children.
Kate Taylor, a reporter at Business Insider who collaborated on the docuseries, noted that police also found diaries where Handy had written, “I am a pedophile, full blown.”
Handy was arrested in 2003, just four months before Peck’s arrest. In 2004, he was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading no contest to one count of lewd acts on a child, one count of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of distributing sexually explicit material by email to a minor, according to court records. He is currently in federal prison for a later conviction, according to court records.
Additionally, in 2009, Ezel Channel, an animator at Nickelodeon, was sentenced to seven years and four months for committing lewd acts on a 14-year-old boy and showing him pornography on set. Channel was already a convicted sex offender when he was hired by the network.
Staffers detail sexism and sexual harassment.
Under Schneider’s leadership, two staff writers of “All That,” Christy Stratton and Jenny Kilgen, say there were many instances of blatant sexism and sexual harassment. They were hired as a pair, and shared a single writer’s salary despite the fact, they say, that the men on staff had a full salary. (Schneider said he has never had anything to do with paying writers in his role and that it was common for writers starting out to share pay.)
Kilgen also said Schneider would play pornography on television in the writer’s room and tell her that if she gave him massages he would put her sketches on air. Kilgen describes a time when Schneider made Stratton pitch her sketch while pretending to be involved in a sexual act.
A statement included in the documentary said Schneider denied Kilgen’s claims.
In addition, a costume designer, actors, parents and others cited multiple occasions in which young women would be standing behind Schneider on set, massaging him.
Karyn Finley Thompson, an editor on “All That,” described a time when she was promised a promotion but said that Schneider instead gave it to a man who didn’t have any previous working credits. Kilgen says she later filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the production company behind “The Amanda Show.” She says the company settled the suit.
Cast members share uncomfortable on-set experiences.
For the child cast members, even though some of Nickelodeon’s more inappropriate jokes went over their heads, they said they were aware that they were being put in uncomfortable situations.
Sullivan, who appeared on “All That,” spoke about some “Fear Factor”-inspired sketches involving an actor lying in a bathtub with earthworms or in which a dog licked peanut butter off a child actor’s body. “They were taking something that exists in an adult context and transmogrifying it for children — when you do that, it’s an inappropriate thing to do.”
Bryan Hearne, also an actor on “All That,” recounted being part of a sketch where he was playing a fetus and needed a skin-colored suit and he overheard someone saying that the suit needed to be a “charcoal” color. (He is Black.) Tracy Brown, Hearne’s mother, also was interviewed, saying it didn’t seem like a coincidence that Hearne’s first sketch involved a situation of Hearne playing a role that seemed to imply that he was a drug dealer. “Oh, the Black kid gets to be the crack dealer?” Brown asked.