If you’re under the age of 40 and online, you’re almost certainly aware of the allegations behind the television that we all grew up with. The smiling faces of our favourite teenaged stars, from Amanda Bynes to Ariana Grande, were launched to fame on Nickelodeon. But behind the scenes, everything from substance abuse to sexual misconduct was present on every show imaginable. And one name stands alone as the culprit: Dan Schneider.
You’ve definitely seen it. The 12-hour videos dissecting teen sitcoms that make sure to spend long stretches of time acknowledging the insane amount of feet specific content in these shows. The gossip videos that consistently allege that Jamie Lynn Spears’ daughter is Schneider’s child. A podcast which spends an episode gawking at the formerly famous and speculating on just how abused they were, with an ad break to promote weighted blankets.
Of course, that’s a misdirect, as it’s only part of the story. As per the latest documentary on the subject – and for once, one with interviews and not on YouTube – we see the breadth of the misconduct and endangerment of these child stars.
The life of a child star, to be blunt, is dangerous.
‘Quiet On Set’ (2024) is essentially four episodes following the rise, fall, and fallout of Schneider as the creative force behind three decades of children’s programming. Primarily through the lens of two of his protegees – an absent Amanda Bynes and a present Drake Bell – you see how his power and prestige within one network allowed him and others to prey upon a seemingly endless amount of children.
Let’s start first with what is actually in the program.
In many ways, these sorts of documentaries all have very similar formats. We historically don’t tell tragedies in experimental ways, and this is undoubtably a tragedy. They find one to three people with similar or connected stories, sit them down to describe their experiences, and then transition to the next round. Episode one shares the stage between early child stars of the 1990s and the female writers of Nickelodeon, before ending on allegations of sexual abuse. It’s less damning through individual experience and more piling up evidence.
There are parts of the documentary that I don’t love, particularly the repeated showcasing of footage it suggests to be akin to child pornography. I understand why they feel it’s effective, but that’s really not what actually hits for me. It’s the lived experiences that work best. The child actors discussing their anxiety on set. The female writers describing a hostile work environment. It's quite well done and flows very naturally. Thankfully (mostly) dropping the “found footage” style popularised by ‘Amy’ (2015), this is a very simple narrative told directly. Dealing primarily with interview footage, what stands out is that it’s rarely just archival. In fact, it only really becomes that when it’s central subject in Bynes does not participate.
So, let’s talk about it.
It’s almost the voices that do not participate in this documentary that shape this series more than those that do. Bynes, Cosgrove, Spears, Justice, McCurdy, Grande – many of the most recognisable female faces of Nickelodeon over the past 30 years do not speak for themselves in all four episodes. Bynes in particular feels like a missing piece, considering the first two episodes revolve around her orbit as Schneider’s protegee and gold girl.
You might be reminded of the documentaries surrounding Britney Spears over the past few years. Like many of those pieces, it’s taken for granted that she would consent to the story being told without actually being asked. It’s in her favour, so why shouldn’t she be grateful? But when she responded to them, it was with rejection. In a world where her story had been stolen from her many times over, it felt like another invasion of privacy.
A similar issue occurred with Pamela Anderson, who did not give her consent to ‘Pam and Tommy’ (2022) and would not acknowledge it publicly. There’s a pattern here. One that, in part, is on the audience.
The entire “Amanda Bynes” segment feels so…strange in this context. It’s essentially a longform piece of speculation that can’t engage with any of the subjects. Bynes certainly isn’t present to explain her relationship with Schneider, and her parents aren’t either. To take up so much of the series feels exploitative and at odds with the purpose of the program.
I can’t fault the producers for mentioning any of these women in their documentary. It makes absolute sense to acknowledge the most famous faces involved in this type of situation. But it feels incredibly counterproductive to focus so heavily on the victimhood of someone who is pointedly not involved. Bynes has an online presence where she could easily discuss these issues. She’s not been shy about using it to call out personal injustice. If this was something she wanted to associate with, she would have.
Legally, you can make art and documentaries about anyone. And I don’t think that should change. But I do ask why we keep returning to subjects who do not consent to being portrayed as victims to pity them.
The documentary is at its strongest when it doesn’t try and make a spectacle out of the victims. The Brian Peck segment in episode two takes a very uncomfortable story and tells it from the perspective of the children who were his coworkers. Which is why the Drake Bell focused third episode is difficult to navigate.
His story isn’t exactly necessary for the documentary to function, but it does add legitimacy to a story that is almost completely being told on the sidelines. It’s suitably tragic and the story of his abuse is told with as much tact as possible. In many ways, this is the hook that the show is built upon. But in order to fold Bell into the narrative, they have to ignore the charges of child endangerment that came from inappropriate interactions between himself and a 15-year-old fan, along with less specific allegations that he had been inappropriate with other underage girls.
Bell’s presence and refusal to engage in his actions head on is striking in a documentary about victims. It’s framed as part of a fall from grace when it does come up, but that fall from grace involves yet another minor being allegedly groomed and legally endangered. They build the entire third episode, and a significant chunk of the fourth, around somebody there who lived through that world and suffered in the ways they’re alleging. Without an actual victim at the centre, this is mostly gossip and speculation.
But because of that, you can’t really scrutinise anything he’s saying of his own actions. It’s a documentary about Schneider and his adult associates preying on children in various ways, but Bell’s own alleged predation is steamrolled in the process. He has a right to tell his story, but it’s damning to the storytelling as a whole. It’s not about being a perfect victim, it’s about telling the truth in a genre that needs you to tell the truth. By brushing past the allegations, and allowing them to be referred to as “misinformation”, they unconsciously repeat the cycle.
This isn’t to say Bell’s story isn’t worth telling. It’s intensely tragic for both father and son to describe a situation where nobody was comfortable with what Peck was doing, but nobody did anything to stop it. He was absolutely failed by the production, Nickelodeon, and even his parents. It’s just extremely unfortunate that, because the documentary is relying on his story, they can’t actively engage with the man outside of this specific narrative. The conversation is probably too nuanced for the filmmakers, and the audience, who have already shown themselves unable to grapple with the complex situation of empathizing with someone who continued the cycle of abuse without ignoring said abuse.
The lack of more recent celebrities, and people who worked on set with Schneider through the late 2000s and 2010s, is another struggle for the series. It blows right past almost 15 years with very little to say. And again, it’s an issue of access. McCurdy, who is given a lot of airtime via archival interviews, can’t even be referenced completely, because she never named the abusive producer in her book. Which is her right to do. But it means that, like the Bynes segments, there are huge chunks of the final episode that are just people reading headlines at you. Which, to be fair, is how people are responding to this whole thing.
That isn’t new, obviously. Look at somebody like Corey Feldman, who had spent most of his adult life as a punchline because he is quite open that he faced abuse as a child star. Because this culture of gawking at victims runs deeper and older than we care to admit.
So much of what’s coming out surrounding ‘Quiet On Set’ reads like gossip rag nonsense. It’s all about “tea”. Questions of why certain celebrities haven’t come out and claimed victimhood, and implications that it’s because they were perpetrators. Attempted cancelations of people who wrote letters in defence of Peck. Armchair psychologists discussing any and every move someone like Bynes has made in her life in connection to alleged abuse. Because for many people, this is just another topic of conversation. It’s yet another way to consume these people. They cannot see the child abuse as anything more than gossip. A predator continuing to work with children is titillating, and in many cases, an opportunity to farm for engagement.
There’s a financial incentive to commodify the exploitation of children as well. Historically, we look to the parents for this sort of accusation. Every guardian in this documentary did a poor job at protecting their children, and many stayed silent because it was advantageous to leave their children in an unsafe environment. But what about the podcasts, the family vlogs, the TikTok edits, the books that will be written? And yes, in this case, even the articles. I really struggled to write this in a way that didn’t just feel like another person standing around the water cooler.
There’s a lot of bemoaning from certain sectors of the world that our media landscape lacks innocence. They’re right. But the loss of naiveté is not on behalf of the cast and crew of the shows and films we consume, it’s on the audience. While we’re still definitely being shielded from current abuse, the truth is that we’re more aware now than we’ve ever been. It used to be a funny joke that Hollywood ran on tragedies like the ones in this series. Now it’s something to speculate on.
‘Quiet On Set’ is a solid take on this specific tragedy. It’s a series of anecdotes that makes you wonder why we keep allowing this segment of child labour to keep chugging along. But it’s a flawed product. Maybe nothing could have been done better than this. It’s certainly better than any of the “thorough” YouTube variants. But I struggle with it because of what it lacks. It feels necessary, but not necessarily complete. And maybe I’m just cynical, but it feels like it’s hitting the wrong audience.