Quiet on Set, a new docuseries from Investigation Discovery, tells the harrowing story of sexual assault and toxic behavior that took place behind the scenes on some of Nickelodeon’s most popular shows.
“I will warn you, if you were a child of the ’90s, this is going to ruin that for you,” a commenter notes grimly in the series opening.
Indeed, the documentary will make it impossible to look at many of the network’s beloved programs — from All That to Zoey 101 to The Amanda Show — in the same way.
Across four episodes, which are now available to stream on Max, the documentary details the horrific sexual assault Nickelodeon star Drake Bell endured at the hands of a crew member, and the hostile and sexist work environment that showrunner Dan Schneider oversaw. A fifth episode, which will include more interviews with former child stars, airs on April 7.
In chronicling these allegations, the docuseries makes clear how vulnerable child actors are to abuse, and how powerful Hollywood creators can normalize harassment. Currently, there is no federal law that protects child actors, so labor policies and safeguards against sexual predators are inconsistent across states. On top of that, there are also gaps in how state laws are enforced, diluting what limited impact they have.
Nickelodeon has said it “investigates all formal complaints” and has “adopted numerous safeguards over the years,” in response to the allegations in the documentary. Schneider, who was dropped by Nickelodeon in 2018 after some of these allegations initially came to light, has also expressed regret about aspects of his past behavior. “I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” Schneider said in an interview with BooG!e, an actor from the show iCarly. (Former child actors have critiqued Nickelodeon and Schneider’s responses as “empty” and a failure to take real responsibility for the harm caused.)
Beyond calling out the specific issues on Nickelodeon programs, the series also highlights how these problems are systemic, and how they go beyond any one show, any one director, or even any one studio.
“It shows that there are not enough protections in place to keep even convicted sexual predators off of kids’ TV shows,” Kate Taylor, a Business Insider reporter whose investigation of the network inspired the documentary, says in one clip.
The allegations detailed in the docuseries, explained
The allegations described in Quiet on Set include harrowing instances of sexual misconduct, pervasive harassment, and troubling plotlines that sexualize children:
Sexual assault
On repeated occasions, sexual predators at Nickelodeon capitalized on their roles to abuse kids.
- Brian Peck: Peck, a dialogue coach on shows including The Amanda Show and All That, was convicted of sexually abusing a minor in 2004. At the time, the child’s identity was kept private and records were sealed. In this documentary, Nickelodeon actor Drake Bell speaks publicly about the assault, and his experience enduring it, for the first time.
Peck was charged with 11 counts of abuse, and convicted of engaging in a lewd act with a minor and of oral copulation with a minor. Following this conviction, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison and forced to register as a sex offender.
Bell, who was roughly 15 at the time of the abuse, describes the trauma of Peck’s actions, and how he used his position on set to embed himself in Bell’s life. Because Peck lived closer to the set than Bell’s mother, he’d often drive the actor to work and let him crash at his place. Bell says the first instance of assault occurred when he was sleeping on Peck’s couch and woke up to being violated. “The abuse was extensive and it got pretty brutal,” Bell said in the documentary, noting that he was afraid to speak out due to Peck’s position and fears of endangering his own job.
After Bell told his mother about the assaults, Peck eventually confessed to his actions, which led to his arrest. A number of powerful figures in Hollywood including actors James Marsden and Alan Thicke, as well as Nickelodeon directors Beth and Rich Correll, wrote character letters in support of Peck. (The Corrells have since apologized.) Many of these letters vouched for Peck, and some suggested that Bell acted as a temptation to him. In another shocking turn, Peck was hired to do voiceover work on the Disney show The Suite Life of Zack and Cody after he got out of prison and was already a convicted sex offender.
- Jason Handy: Handy, a production assistant on shows like All That and The Amanda Show pleaded “no contest” to lewd acts on a child and the distribution of sexually explicit material in 2004, both counts tied to his actions toward girls on Nickelodeon shows. Handy served six years in prison, registered as a convicted sex offender, and was charged again with new offenses a few years after his release.
In the documentary, a mother named MJ describes how Handy sent a photo of himself masturbating to her 11-year-old daughter Brandi, whom he met on a Nickelodeon set. Handy also assaulted another girl he met at Nickelodeon who was acting on the show Cousin Skeeter.
In a raid of Handy’s home, law enforcement found hundreds of sexually explicit photos of young girls, as well as ziplock bags with different girls’ names on them that included individual mementos. In his journal, Handy also described himself as a “pedophile” and said he had difficulty controlling his urges around kids.
- Ezel Channel: Channel, a freelance animator at Nickelodeon, was accused of bringing multiple teenage boys to his workplace, molesting them, and showing them pornography. He was convicted of lewd acts on a minor and of showing a minor pornography in 2009 and had already been a convicted sex offender when he began work at Nickelodeon, a sign of how little scrutiny there was on people’s records.
A hostile work environment
Schneider, a producer on multiple Nickelodeon juggernauts, including All That, The Amanda Show, Drake and Josh, Sam & Cat, and iCarly, is also accused of creating a hostile work environment that was rampant with sexual harassment and racism.
- Sexism: Multiple women who worked on these shows, including two writers and a costumer, described a pattern of sexist behavior on set.
Schneider would regularly demand that women give him massages and show pornography to the staff, they said. Two of the early women writers hired for The Amanda Show — Christy Stratton and Jenny Kilgen — also said they were asked to split a salary, and that they were the subject of inappropriate jokes and scenarios in a predominantly male writer’s room. In one instance, one of the writers was asked if she had ever done phone sex for work, and in another, a writer was asked to pitch an idea while acting like she was being sodomized.
Schneider has denied underpaying women writers and apologized for his inappropriate comments to writers. “It was wrong that I put anybody in that position,” he said, regarding the massages he requested.
The documentary also scrutinizes how close Schneider was to young girls on set, including his frequent massaging of child actors, and the revealing wardrobe he often had them wear for shows. Jennette McCurdy, a former child actor on the Nickelodeon shows iCarly and Sam & Cat, previously wrote about an anonymous showrunner, nicknamed The Creator, who is thought to be Schneider, engaging in similar acts.
- Racism: Two Black actors noted that they were tokenized on the shows that they were on and subject to plotlines that relied on racial profiling. Actor Bryan Hearne also expressed concerns about retaliation because his mom spoke up against the racism he experienced.
- Abuse and berating: A number of people interviewed in the documentary note that Schneider could be unpredictable and temperamental, including berating and undermining people for their work. Following a Nickelodeon investigation, which did not find evidence of sexual misconduct, but did find proof of abusive behavior, Schneider was dropped by the network in 2018.
Inappropriate, sexualized plot points
Another chief issue in the documentary is how Schneider repeatedly sexualized kids, putting them in scenarios and making them do jokes that were completely inappropriate.
Some of the examples it highlights include a scene in Zoey 101 when a tube of goo squirts all over Jamie Lynn Spears’s face. “We heard the boys saying, ‘It’s a cum shot,’” says Alexa Nikolas, a fellow actor on the show. Other disturbing scenes include ones in Victorious that show Ariana Grande massaging a potato, sucking on her toes, and pouring water all over herself. Jokes that involved a girl asking another if she wanted to get hit in the face with a sausage and frequent zoom-ins on kids’ feet were troubling, too.
In addition to putting child actors in uncomfortable situations, these scenes also exposed millions of kids who watched them to sexual scenarios and innuendos in a problematic way. “This is a show for kids, so who is sexual innuendo for on a kids show?” asked Scaachi Koul, a former BuzzFeed News culture writer and consultant for the docuseries.
Schneider has said that executives at the company broadly approved these scenes and that he’d be open to removing offensive ones from streaming versions.
The documentary stresses how vulnerable child actors are — and how they need more protections
Notably, Quiet on Set raises issues that have plagued the industry for some time.
While Nickelodeon is its focal point, the problems it describes are far from limited to one network. “I know a lot of kids that grew up in the industry,” Evan Rachel Wood, a former child actor, says in a 2020 documentary called Showbiz Kids. “And what surprised me when I got older was finding out that pretty much all of the young men were abused in some way sexually.”
Child actors are omitted from federal laws overseeing issues like hours and overtime because acting was not viewed as “oppressive child labor” when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, HuffPost reported.
As a result, any labor protections for child actors are left up to the states, 17 of which have opted not to implement any at all.
Even when states do have laws, however, they continue to struggle with proper enforcement.
Take California: Overall, the state’s laws on child actors are seen as some of the strongest in the country, and they include limits on the hours a kid can work each day, the need to obtain a permit to become a child actor, and mandatory meals and rest breaks. These policies also require a parent to be on set, and within sightline of a child under 16. And they set aside mandatory time each day for schooling, and call on the on-set teacher to serve as another guardian for a child’s well-being and safety.
Two other California laws are also dedicated to protecting children’s earnings, and screening people who work with child actors. The latter, AB 1660, requires certain professionals who work with children to pass an FBI background check and obtain a permit.
These laws have limited utility if not properly enforced, however. “Whatever laws you have, they have to be enforced, and whoever has to enforce them has to have the resources to do it,” New York University adjunct law professor Day Krolik, who previously worked in the entertainment industry, told Vox. Such enforcement could come from state Labor Departments and take the form of financial penalties or other ramifications if a network violates these laws.
As Deadline found in a 2018 investigation, for example, AB 1660 was rarely enforced, meaning there were few, if any, consequences if a professional it applied to hadn’t gotten a background check.
Many former child actors and parents are now calling for new laws that fill in current gaps and bolster protections for kids.
Krolik notes that a federal law standardizing labor policy could help address inconsistencies across states and guarantee these protections no matter where a child works. Advocates have called, too, for laws that bar the use of nondisclosure agreements in instances of sexual misconduct or harassment. And Alyson Stoner, a former Disney Channel star, is among those who have emphasized the importance of a law requiring a mental health professional to be present on set, so children have someone to talk to if they’re struggling.
With kids increasingly being used to help parents generate income in social media content and YouTube videos, advocates note that existing laws should also be expanded to include and shield these young creators as well.
As Quiet on Set makes evident, stricter policies and follow-through are vital to ensure that the issues it documents don’t continue.
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