Former Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider is speaking out following the premiere of the Investigation Discovery documentary, “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” a four-part series alleging child abuse and a toxic workplace environment at the network.
Schneider is named in the doc as an instigator of many uncomfortable situations, including making crude jokes and forcing employees to embarrass themselves. While Brian Peck, a dialogue coach for Nickelodeon’s “The Amanda Show,” was arrested and charged with sexual abuse crimes, Schneider was not.
The producer was let go from the network in 2018 amid allegations of abuse but was never formally charged with any crimes. Schneider was once called “the Norman Lear of children’s children” by The New York Times. He’s known for creating popular kids shows such as “The Amanda Show,” “Drake & Josh,” “Zoey 101,” “iCarly,” “Victorious,” and “Sam & Cat.”
Now Schneider is commenting on the documentary that’s making headlines. “Watching over the past two nights was very difficult — me facing my past behaviors, some of which are embarrassing and that I regret. I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” Schneider told BooG!E, who played T-Bo on the series “iCarly,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
“When I watched the show, I could see the hurt in some people’s eyes, and it made me feel awful and regretful and sorry. I wish I could go back, especially to those earlier years of my career, and bring the growth and the experience that I have now and just do a better job and never, ever feel like it was OK to be an a**hole to anyone, ever,” the former Nickelodeon producer added.
As for the allegations of sexually inappropriate content inserted into children’s programming, Schneider’s rep said, “Everything that happened on the shows Dan ran was carefully scrutinized by dozens of involved adults, and approved by the network.”
Schneider also addressed former child star Drake Bell coming forward and telling the public that he was the John Doe in the 2004 sexual assault case against former Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck. Peck pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender, as The Daily Wire previously reported.
“When Drake and I talked and he told me about what happened, I was more devastated by that than anything that ever happened to me in my career thus far. And I told him, ‘I’m here for you,’” Schneider claimed.
Schneider went on to discuss the jokes he made that documentary participants deemed inappropriate. For example, a clip of a young Ariana Grande sucking on her own toes, squeezing a potato while moaning, and dousing herself in water while lying on a bed were mentioned in the documentary.
Another incident from “Quiet on Set” mentioned a fully clothed Schneider in a hot tub with then-16-year-old Amanda Bynes, who was wearing a bikini. She was forced to read a script he wrote, and then later, they ate spaghetti.
There was also an allegation about how Schneider came up with an alter ego for Bynes named “Penelope Taynt.” Former employees said they were instructed to pretend not to know the definition of the word, which references the area of skin between the penis and anus. “Dan had said to us in the writers room: don’t tell what this word really means,” a former employee stated.
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“All those jokes … the show covered over the past two nights, every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny and only funny,” he said. At another point during the lengthy apology, Schneider said, “Let me just say, no writer should ever feel uncomfortable in any writers room, ever. Period. The end. No excuses.”
Ultimately, the former Nickelodeon producer says he should have had a different attitude at work.
“There are definitely things that I would do differently,” he said. “The main thing that I would change is how I treat people and everyone. I definitely at times didn’t give people the best of me. I didn’t show enough patience. I could be cocky and definitely over-ambitious, and sometimes just straight up rude and obnoxious, and I’m sorry that I ever was.”
