‘Quiet on Set’ allegations forced Dan Schneider to speak up. Now, more should
Lorraine Ali March 20, 2024
Child actors were exploited and sexually abused by the adults they worked with on several hit Nickelodeon shows throughout the
90s and 2000s. When one such adult
Brian Peck
was arrested on 11 cha
r
ges of child sex abuse and then
plead ed no contest to two
in 2004, dozens of notable actors and television industry figures openly supported him during the sentencing portion of his case. And after
serving he served
his time,
for raping a child,
the Disney
C
hannel hired him to work on one of its hit
kid
series
, “The Suite Life with of Zack & Cody
.
“
Layer after layer of depravity is revealed and alleged in Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a multipart
,
Investigation Discovery docuseries about the abuse endured by multiple child actors while working on hit Nickelodeon comedies such as All That, The Amanda Show
,
and iCarly.
Such The
shows are decades behind us, but the hushing effect of power and the quiet acceptance of predatory behavior is still an evergreen in Hollywood,
as
evidenced by all the folks whove released weak-sauce defenses, or maintained total radio silence since the documentary aired
earlier
this week.
The
true-crime network
documentary from directors
Mary Robertson
and
Emma Schwartz
is full of bombshells, but much of the outrage now is around the contents of court documents unsealed for the first time in nearly 20 years.
The documents show that 41 letters were written in support of
convicted sexual abuser Brian
Peck, who was a Nickelodeon dialogue coach and actor before his 2003 arrest. Heartfelt testimonials
about Peck
rolled in
supporting Peck
during the sentencing portion of the case from actors like James Marsden,
Ron Melendez
, Alan Thicke, Rider Strong,
Will Friedle
and former The Amanda Show co-star
Taran Killam
.
Public pressure is building for Peck’s defenders to explain why they threw in
support
for
Peck,the perpetrator
whose charges include
d
sodomy of a person under 16, sexual penetration by a foreign object, four counts of oral copulation of a person under 16, oral copulation by anesthesia or controlled substance, and using a minor for sex acts. Some
of the letter writers
even
suggested toasked
the judge
to put that
Peck
be put
on probation rather than
send him sent
to prison. He
served was sentenced to
16 months.
While Marsden and company are the most publicly recognizable names in the cry for accountability, Disney and Nickelodeon have also offered little in the way of an apology or accountability for their blind-eye policies that created safe havens
and jobs
for predators like Peck.
Nickelodeon Production Assistant
, a former Nickelodeon production assistant,
was
also arrested in 2003 sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after pleading no contest
on two felony counts, including lewd acts on a child and distributing sexually explicit material.
Maybe things have since changed for child actors, but
both networks Nickelodeon’s
nebulous responses at the end of Quiet on Set episodes
, and in statements sent to the media last week,
do little to
ensure assure
audiences that theres been any notable transformation inside their fiefdoms.
The media, film and television industries should be seasoned pros at dealing with this kind of ugliness. Theres a long history of powerful men victimizing those who hope to make it big (or simply make a living). And it wasnt that long ago that networks and Hollywood were forced to contend with its coddling of powerful, serial predators like Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein
and
and
Kevin Spacey thanks to dogged reporting on the problem and the brave folks who dared to speak out against their abusers.
Former child star
is
who
co-starred
onof the
Drake & Josh
,
show,
is one such courageous soul. He
says he
was the unnamed child at the heart of the case against Peck, and
he
speaks publicly for the first time in the ID documentary. His entire side of the courtroom was full, said Bell.
There were definitely some recognizable faces on that side of the room
.
And my side was me, my mom and my brother.
Peck was convicted at that point, and Bell says that he was shocked by all the support Peck got from people in the industry.
And Bell was given more reason to
lose
faith in an industry he once called home. After Peck served his
time in
prison
sentence,
he was hired to work on
the popular Disney Channel Show
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Rich and Beth Correll who worked as a director and first assistant director on the show
knew of Pecks background because they were among those
that who
had written a letter in his defense.
(The Corrells, in a statement to the documentary’s producers, say “they had no input or involvement in the casting” of Peck on the show and that when they asked him about it, he said “the problem had been resolved.”)
Nickelodeon rose to prominence at the turn of the century by generating a string of aggressively energetic sketch comedy series for kids. The loud and brash content was aimed at the older siblings of the Disney Channel audience. It offered relatively edgier content than Mickey and Minnie and oodles of gross-out moments, including its trademark dump of green slime on Nickelodeon stars, reality show contestants and Kid
s
‘
Choice Award honorees.
Central to the networks success was producer Dan Schneider, and hes also a central figure in allegations of a toxic
work
environment on set and behind the scenes
at Nickelodeon
. Several former actors from his
showshis sets
, now adults, speak out in the documentary about how Schneider bullied
his
casts and crew
s
, created adult-like, sexualized scenarios
o
n their shows and pushed them to perform extreme, if not crude, stunts.
Behind the scenes, one of two female writers who worked for Schneider in the 1990s recalled a harrowing event in the writers room, when Schneider pressured one of them into recounting an event from their high school years while pretending she was the recipient
of
anal sex
all in the name of laughs.
She sued the network, they settled, and her career was ruined. Schneider went on to
be
become the networks golden boy. And now
those former employees, along with
a slew of former child actors
,
have horror stories to tell thanks to a network that failed to protect the children behind the ratings.
