Investigation Discovery is getting plenty of buzz from their bombshell Nickelodeon doc Quiet on Set, but not every former child star is a fan of the docuseries.
Former Disney child actor Christy Carlson Romano, best known for her work in Even Stevens and Kim Possible, recently claimed that she was also approached by ID for a documentary about kids television, but opted not to insert herself “into the narrative.”
“I’ve chosen not to speak about this with anybody, including ID, who originally came to me looking to see if I’d be interested in a doc like this,” Romano said during a recent appearance on Mayim Bialik‘s podcast Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown.
“I don’t know if it was [Quiet on Set]. But I was approached when I first started advocating three years ago for my own YouTube channel with my own experiences that I did in different and separate episodes, so to speak,” Romano said. “I started to be approached by many reality-show-type producers, and they were like, ‘Hey, how do we do this?’ and I would combat them with saying, ‘Hey, guys, the only way we would do this is if we talk about how do we fix it?’
“Alyson Stoner, who is a fantastic advocate in this space, has really impinged upon me the importance of understanding trauma porn,” Romano said, later noting that the filmmakers involved did not personally experience the things they were documenting.
“These are people who don’t belong to our community,” she said. “These are outsiders. And maybe they, maybe if they knew where to put money towards [fixing] a problem, they would, but again, a lot of this has been perceived in a way that’s — it’s outside baseball. It’s not inside baseball, it’s outside baseball. These are trauma tourists.”
The actress later confessed that she hasn’t watched Quiet on Set since it premiered on Max earlier this month.
“I think that it’s extremely triggering,” she said. “I’ve made a choice for several reasons to opt out of watching that imagery. I know a lot of the details, I know a lot of the folks involved.”
The Quiet on Set documentary series detailed the allegedly toxic work environment at Nickelodeon that existed during the late ’90s and 2000s while series like The Amanda Show, All That, Zoey 101, and more put the network and its stars on the map. Most shockingly, the docuseries reveals that at least three registered sex offenders worked at Nickelodeon at the time, including one who was convicted of sexually assaulting Drake Bell.
Romano has interviewed several child stars and people who grew up in the industry on her podcast Vulnerable, including Jill Duggar, Nickelodeon actor Devon Werkheiser — who was slammed by Bell for laughing at the Quiet on Set revelations — Abigail Breslin, and many more.
Speaking to Bialik, Romano expressed that the rights of child actors should be taken more seriously and should be considered a labor issue. She explained that she works with the Looking Ahead program, which helps young entertainers navigate the industry.
“I had mentioned to one of the producers in the advisory committee, I said, Why don’t we have all the [assistant directors] say ‘Minors on set’? Like, we have a gun, when they say ‘Guns on set,’ and they say ‘Alligator on set,’ or whatever it is, to phrase it from a top-down scenario to understand that, yes, they’re laborers, but they’re child laborers. There is a difference,” she said.
“So I find, I do truly feel, and this may incite a little bit of backlash, but I do think they’re being under-serviced as union workers, personally,” she added.
Quiet on Set is now streaming on Max.
