‘Quiet on Set’ bombshells about Nickelodeon: Pedophiles, sexism, more

The first two episodes of the four-part docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV aired on Investigation Discovery on Sunday night, and the show dropped a number of disconcerting bombs about the workplace culture at Nickelodeon during the 1990s and early 2000s. 

Quiet on Set examines the toxic environment at Nick during the reign of megaproducer Dan Schneider, who created and executive produced hit series like The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, iCarly, and Zoey 101. 

Schneider and Nickelodeon parted ways in 2018 after a two-decade working relationship, following a ViacomCBS investigation that determined no evidence of sexual misconduct but concluded that Schneider was verbally abusive on set, per a 2021 report by The New York Times. Schneider denied all allegations of misconduct. “I couldn’t and I wouldn’t have the long-term friendships and continued loyalty from so many reputable people if I’d mistreated my actors of any age, especially minors,” he told the outlet at the time.

Nickelodeon offered the following statement to EW about the documentary: “Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors 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.”

A spokesperson for Schneider shared the following statement with EW: “Dan expected and asked a lot from his teams. They worked long hours and consistently made successful shows. In the challenges of production, Dan could get frustrated at times, and he understands why some employees found that intimidating or stressful. In a career spanning 30+ years, Dan worked with thousands of people, many of whom still tell him how much they enjoyed and appreciated working on his shows. But he also knows some people did not have a positive experience, and he is truly sorry for that.”

The first two eps feature interviews with a number of former cast members from All That and the Amanda Bynes-led spinoff series, The Amanda Show, including Leon Frierson, Katrina Johnson, Raquel Lee Bolleau, Giovonnie Samuels, Kyle Sullivan, and Bryan Christopher Hearne, who all share about experiences that range from strange to downright terrifying.

Below are the major allegations from the first two episodes of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. (Check back for updates after the final two episodes air Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ID.)

A production assistant was self-proclaimed pedophile

Perhaps the most disturbing section of this half of Quiet on Set discusses Jason Handy, a production assistant on All That and The Amanda Show in the early 2000s. Parents and kids alike thought Handy was a friendly, helpful presence on set, and didn’t think twice when he asked to exchange email addresses and phone numbers. “You thought, ‘Oh, I could be friends with this person,’” said MJ, the mother of former Amanda Show performer identified as Brandi.

MJ’s perspective changed when her 11-year-old daughter had a mortified reaction to an email from Handy. “It was a picture of him naked masturbating, and he said he had sent it to her because he wanted her to see that he was thinking of her,” MJ said. Brandi left the entertainment industry after the email, and was one of the few victims who cooperated with the eventual investigation.

Handy was arrested in April 2003 after law enforcement received a tip about him, and the docuseries says that when police investigated his home, they found over 10,000 images of children and over 1,700 images of young girls in erotic poses, as well as seven videos on CD files of children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The doc also claims that in Handy’s personal diary, he wrote sentences like “I am a pedophile, full blown,” “I really have been giving into my desire for little girls these past few weeks,” and “I even struggle on a day-to-day basis of how I can find a victim to rape if I have to.”

Another one of Handy’s victims — a young guest star on Cousin Skeeter on Nick — was assaulted by the PA at her home in 2000. He told her not to tell her mother, and told her that he could get her jobs on other shows.

In 2004, per the Los Angeles Times, Handy was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted on two felony counts, one of lewd acts on a child and one of distributing sexually explicit material by email, as well as on a misdemeanor charge related to sexual exploitation of a child.

“I no longer trusted anybody with children in this industry,” MJ said. “I felt abandoned. There was never any apology to Brandi herself for what happened. Everything got swept under the rug.”

The only two women writers on The Amanda Show’s first season allege they experienced sexual harassment

Two key subjects in the documentary, Jenny Kilgen and Christy Stratton, who were interviewed separately, described their experiences as the only two women writers during the first season of The Amanda Show. Kilgen and Stratton described patterns of allegedly distressing behavior from Dan Schneider in the workplace. 

They claim early meetings with Schneider also suggested that gender-related issues might persist. “It was early on when we first started when Dan said he didn’t think women were funny,” Stratton recalled. “He said women can’t write funny,” Kilgen said. “He challenged us to name a funny female writer, and he said this to the writers in the writers’ room. And that was my first indication of trouble. That maybe this guy didn’t really value women in the writers’ room. And later, he had said that, ‘Hey, do you mind if I refer to you and Christy as “the girls?”’…and we both were like ‘no.’ And he said ‘oh, good, because I can’t stand girls that are uptight about things like that.’ And when he said that, I knew that next time this guy asks me if I mind something, there’s a right and wrong answer, and thank God I answered right.”

Stratton later described an incident in which Schneider allegedly challenged her to eat an obscene amount of ice cream in a limited time period for a $200 prize, and said that when she casually reminded him that he hadn’t paid her for completing the task, he lashed out.

“Dan got worse and worse as the season got on,” Kilgen said. “Because I was a first-time writer, I didn’t know what was acceptable and not acceptable. And so Christy and I both did things that were uncomfortable.” She alleged in the doc that Schneider showed her porn and asked for massages, saying, “Dan was showing pornography on his computer screen. He asked me several times to massage him in the writers’ room and in the studio, and he would say things sometimes like ‘Kim, please give me a massage, I’ll put one of your sketches in the show.’ And he would always present it like a joke, and he would be laughing while he said it. But you always felt like disagreeing with Dan or standing up for yourself could result in you getting fired.”

A spokesperson for Schneider told EW, “Dan deeply regrets asking anyone for neck massages. Though they happened in public settings, he knows this was highly inappropriate and would never happen again.”

The most explicit incident of alleged sexual harassment came later. “Christy was talking about high school, which is relevant because we’re writing for a young girl,” Kilgen recalled. “And Dan just said, ‘You know what’d be funny? If you leaned over the table, and acted like you were being sodomized and told that story about high school.’ She said no at first, and then he was kind of like, ‘Oh, c’mon, c’mon, it’d be so funny just do it, it’d be so funny.’ And everyone’s kind of laughing too, ‘cause he’s making it this big joke. She couldn’t get out of it, he’s begging her. So she just leaned over the table and did what he asked her to do.”

Stratton did not want to go into detail when asked about the incident herself. “I’d rather not. I don’t wanna talk about that,” she said. “Thinking about it now, yeah, it’s like, oh boy. I just think about that poor girl and what she had to go through. And I would not do that today, but I did it then.”

Additionally, Stratton claimed the two women were asked to “split a salary” when they were initially hired. “I remember speaking to the line producer, and she said that I was going to have to split a salary with a writer that I did not know,” Stratton recalled. 

Kilgen alleged that Schneider called to threaten her after she reported what she called an illegal split salary to the Writers Guild of America, but she still returned for the second season. However, she said she only lasted four days, as she alleged that Schneider called her into his office and repeatedly asked her if she had ever performed phone sex. She left distraught, quit the job, and sued Schneider. “I hired a lawyer and started blowing whistles,” she said, and also claimed that her lawsuit led to internal investigations at Nickelodeon.

A spokesperson for Schneider told EW, “The Amanda Show was produced by a different company (Tollin/Robbins) not Dan. Additionally, Dan was not involved in writers’ salaries, they were controlled by the network and also by the WGA, not by Dan even on shows he did create. However, unfortunately writers’ rooms were often off-color places, especially more than 20 years ago. Dan is extremely sorry for his behavior that contributed to that environment and he has grown a lot since then. That behavior is clearly wrong and not for the workplace, and certainly he would never act that way again.”

Young cast members say they were frequently subjected to uncomfortable situations on set

Multiple former cast members from All That — the teen sketch series starring Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Lori Beth Denberg, and Amanda Bynes — and The Amanda Show, said that they were pressured to perform in off-putting sketches that featured suggestive and/or racially insensitive humor. “The show is full of these weird, uncomfortable sketches,” said All That cast member Kyle Sullivan. “I think Dan got a kick out of walking a line with that.”

One particularly distressing incident came when All That’s Bryan Christopher Hearne was asked to play a rapper. “There was a sketch where I played the youngest rapper of all time, Lil Fetus,” Hearne said. “They were fitting me for the Lil Fetus role. And essentially, you’re a fetus, so you nekked, but you know they had to put a body suit on me, and obviously it has to be skin tone. Someone said, ‘The skin tone should be charcoal.’ I started to get teary eyed. Whoever was doing my makeup at the time was kinda like, hand on my shoulder, like ‘It’s gonna be okay.’”

Hearne’s mother Tracey Brown also shared negative memories of the show. “They set up the scene like [Bryan] was selling drugs,” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh, the Black kid gets to be the crack dealer?’ And we were at the end of the scene and there was a man sitting there who was the producer. Behind him was a young lady massaging him. Why were you having adult jokes? Are you showing the kids that Hollywood is a casting couch?”

Leon Frierson also reported feeling uncomfortable with certain sketches. “There’s a new character for me on All That named Nose Boy,” he recalled. “Naturally, I’m in a superhero costume, which is just tights and underwear. What was different about this: they gave me a prosthetic nose, like an enlarged nose, and they put this same nose on the costume. You can’t help but notice that it looks like penis and testicles on my shoulders.”

Perhaps the most unpleasant moments on set, though, came on the Fear Factor-inspired series On-Air Dares. “I did the peanut butter one, so I had to be submerged in peanut butter,” Hearne said. “That was weird, but then the dogs come. I’m laying on the ground and the dogs, they gotta lick peanut butter off my body. That sounds like some kinda awkward fantasy from some freaky dude. It was really uncomfortable. I didn’t like that.”

“Those were particularly traumatic, and they were sort of designed to be,” Sullivan confirmed. “There was sort of this weird dynamic with it, where they were taking something that exists in an adult context like Fear Factor, and like transmogrifying it into kids. When you do that, it’s actually like an inappropriate thing to do.”

“The thing that was most uncomfortable was having to watch your fellow castmates be, essentially, tortured,” Hearne said. “If there’s anything on set that I wish I could’ve yelled ‘Stop, let’s not do this. I’m out,’ it’s the On-Air Dares.”

In a statement to EW made via Schneider’s team, Russell Hicks, former president of content and production at Nickelodeon, said, “Dan Schneider is one of the most prolific producers of hit television in the kids and family entertainment business. Dan’s shows transcend children’s television and are staples on many streaming platforms today, enjoyed by both kids and their parents. Dan cared about the kids on his shows even when sometimes their own families unfortunately did not.” Hicks added, “Every single thing that Dan ever did on any of his shows was carefully scrutinized and approved by executives at Nickelodeon.”

A spokesperson for Schneider told EW, “Everything that happened on the shows Dan ran was carefully scrutinized by dozens of involved adults, and approved by the network. If there was an actual problem with the scenes that some people, now years later are ‘sexualizing’, they would be taken down, but they are not, they are aired constantly all over the world today still, enjoyed by both kids and parents. “

“Remember, all stories, dialogue, costumes, and makeup were fully approved by network executives on two coasts,” the statement continues. “A standards and practices group read and ultimately approved every script, and programming executives reviewed and approved all episodes. In addition, every day on every set, there were always parents and caregivers and their friends watching filming and rehearsals. Had there been any scenes or outfits that were inappropriate in any way, they would have been flagged and blocked by this multilayered scrutiny.” 

“Unfortunately, some adults project their adult minds onto kids’ shows, drawing false conclusions about them,” the statement concludes.

Crew member Brian Peck made questionable impressions before his 2003 arrest for sexual abuse

Dialogue coach Brian Peck, who worked on All That and The Amanda Show, was arrested in 2003 for child sexual abuse and later convicted. Before that, he was generally well-regarded on set, but one of his prized possessions raised some eyebrows. “Everyone went to Brian’s house for a barbecue, and his house was a little off,” Sullivan remembered. “He had a room that was just dedicated to vintage toys and comic books, and he’d converted his garage into like a Planet of the Apes shrine. 

“I noticed a painting in the room that stuck out to me because it had nothing to do with Planet of the Apes,” he continued. “It was of a birthday clown holding balloons. And Brian got very excited when I asked him about it, he flipped the thing around, and on the back it said, ‘To Brian, I hope you enjoy the painting. Best wishes, your friend John Wayne Gacy.’ It was a self-portrait of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.”

“At this point, I’m like 14, I didn’t know the details, but I knew, like, this guy’s [expletive] serial killer who killed a lot of young men and boys,” Sullivan said. “My instinct was like, ‘Everyone has to see this.’ And so all the parents and the kids come in the room, and then Brian presents the painting again. And Brian actually developed a pen pal relationship with John. He kept this pile of letters and photos from John Wayne Gacy in his nightstand next to his bed. And pulls them out, and starts showing them to me.”

The documentary did not provide further confirmation of Peck and Gacy’s relationship. EW has not been able to reach Peck for comment.

Dan Schneider’s temperament troubled cast and crew members

Cast and crew members alleged that Schneider’s behavior led to a tense environment on set. 

“Dan would come down and yell and scream. There was many times where I had to go ‘Okay. You’re creating an atmosphere on this set that is not healthy,’” said Amanda Show director Virgil Fabian. “He was just an egomaniac. You know, when everybody is just kissing your butt, and the money’s crazy, how do you avoid that? I don’t know how you avoid that.”

“Dan’s presence in a room could change the vibe of the room,” Hearne confirmed. “Everybody would kinda just be like ‘Okay. Shut up. Shut up.’”

A spokesperson for Schneider shared the following statement with EW: “Dan expected and asked a lot from his teams. They worked long hours and consistently made successful shows. In the challenges of production, Dan could get frustrated at times, and he understands why some employees found that intimidating or stressful. In a career spanning 30+ years, Dan worked with thousands of people, many of whom still tell him how much they enjoyed and appreciated working on his shows. But he also knows some people did not have a positive experience, and he is truly sorry for that.”

Multiple cast and crew members in the doc also referenced Schneider’s close relationship with Bynes, who was 13 when The Amanda Show debuted.

“I definitely saw Amanda being very close physically with Dan,” editor Karyn Finley Thompson stated, alleging, “There were many times that I saw Amanda sitting behind him hugging him, or like giving him a neck massage or whatever. Dan and Amanda had a close relationship, and I didn’t think anything different than that.”

Schneider’s spokesperson did not directly address his relationship with Bynes, but did note that “Dan deeply regrets asking anyone for neck massages. Though they happened in public settings, he knows this was highly inappropriate and would never happen again.”

Each episode of the docuseries ends with the text: “In response to producers’ questions, Nickelodeon has stated it ‘investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace… [W]e 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.’”

Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV episodes 1 and 2 are on ID now. Episodes 3 and 4 will air Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ID.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.

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