This post contains details from the first four episodes of ID’s documentary series Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
A little over a year and a half ago, producers Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz began to have some questions about kids television. More specifically, about the heyday of Nickelodeon.
“Emma and I had noticed…compilations of clips that were made on sets that Dan Schneider presided over, and these compilations were making their way around social media. They included clips of material that is arguably sexual in nature,” Robertson told Deadline. “If this arguably sexual content was being created on sets featuring child actors, for children to absorb, what else was possibly happening? What could this portend or signal about what was really happening behind the scenes?”
Eventually, those questions would evolve into something much more as the two women took a deep dive into what they have now dubbed “the dark side of kids TV.” The result is ID’s documentary series Quiet on Set, in which the filmmakers speak with many former child actors of the 1990s and early 2000s who allege experiences of abuse, sexism and racism on set.
Former Nickelodeon stars including Drake Bell, Giovonnie Samuels, Alexa Nikolas, Bryan Hearne, and more shared their experiences on these sets. While some have been outspoken for years, others like Bell came forward publicly for the first time.
The docuseries sparked a conversation not only about accountability for the toxic workplace cultures of the past, but also about preventing future abuses in children’s entertainment.
Robertson and Schwartz, as well as ID chief Jason Sarlanis, spoke with Deadline more about the series and its implications in the interview below.
DEADLINE: Some of these details and allegations were already well known before this documentary. What compelled you to dive deeper and move ahead with this documentary?
MARY ROBERTSON: Emma and I had noticed…compilations of clips that were made on sets that Dan Schneider presided over, and these compilations were making their way around social media. They included clips of material that is arguably sexual in nature. Ariana Grande laying off the side of the bed dousing her chest and her neck and her face with water. Ariana Grande squeezing a potato. Jamie Lynn Spears receiving a squirt of a viscous liquid on her face in a manner that’s arguably evocative of pornography. Of course, these are now grown women, but at the time they were young teenagers. There was this swirl of questions online. Did I grow up watching this sexually charged content, and I was unaware of it at the time? How much of this type of content was out there that I didn’t absorb? How was this possibly made? How many adults were on set? Who was in charge? And if this arguably sexual content was being created on sets featuring child actors, for children to absorb, what else was possibly happening? What could this portend or signal about what was really happening behind the scenes?
We thought and think that those are meaningful questions. They’re not frivolous. Perhaps some dismiss them as conspiracy theory or as outdated, but we see them as really meaningful questions because they pertain to the working conditions for children. Full stop. That is justification alone for the investigation. What was created on those sets and then disseminated to the world, and which has probably now been received by millions of children and adults, shapes their sense of normal. Children are impressionable. Watching this material shapes their standards, their sense of appropriateness and beyond. So we started to look deeply at this around the same time Kate Taylor published a piece at Business Insider that really advanced the reporting around these questions. She was also taking it quite seriously. We are grateful that we were able to partner with Business Insider on this project. We brought it to Jason [Sarlanis at ID], and Jason had already had a pre-existing interest in the subject matter. Jason understood the power of this material.
EMMA SCHWARTZ: We had a lot of questions. So we did what one ordinarily does, which is just reach out to as many people as we possibly could, pulling names from IMDb and other spreadsheets, just trying to see what people thought. Very quickly, folks wrote back, and some of them weren’t necessarily in a place that they are ready to talk publicly, but they were very glad that we were digging in and said, ‘There’s so much more to unearth.’ I think what you see in Quiet on Set is the results of people who had been holding a lot of secrets, a lot of trauma, a lot of experiences and felt that by sharing their story, they could shed light not just on what they went through, but on this industry more broadly. You can see how that has really sparked a conversation and a movement among so many people across the space.
DEADLINE: Can you tell me more about crafting the documentary? It’s pretty bold in its presentation of this information, even some that remain allegations.
ROBERTSON: We want to create wildly engrossing and captivating work that is powered by great journalism. At Maxine [Productions], that doesn’t mean newsy or presentational, it means that the work is accurate and means that the work is often investigative in nature. We sure hope that it’s revelatory. We strive to create revelatory work. I’m so lucky to be working with Emma, who is an incredible investigative journalist and spent years working as a print journalist, spent years working on the frontline where she won many awards. She understands what you need to do to, using journalism parlance, to source a project like this and how important it is to have an extensive list of sources. There is power in having many voices. It reinforces and provides clarity. The other journalists and producers that we worked with also really understand how to stand up an allegation. We understand at Maxine how to separate fact from fiction and this story in particular, there had been so much conspiracy and mixed in, there are some very legitimate questions and some guesses about what was happening behind the scenes that ended up being right. We saw it as our mission to separate fact from fiction and provide accurate, comprehensive information to the public.
SCHWARTZ: You put together the story that you’re able to learn about. The folks who we have on camera are people who were telling us what they went through, [but] we’ve spoken with many other people behind the scenes who might back up their experiences or other similar experiences that helped us have confidence in different aspects of the stories. I think what we simply did is we told the stories that people have been through and those stories speak for themselves in terms of the power of what people went through.
SARLANIS: We greenlit this as a three episode series. In the process of telling that story, Mary and Emma said, ‘We need more time. This is far deeper, more nuanced than we initially understood.’ And without hesitation, we said yes, take the time, you need to get this story right. So that’s how the the show came to be, and I think it’s that relationship and trust in them as filmmakers that you see on screen.
DEADLINE: There are many voices in this documentary who have never spoken about their experience before. Among them is Drake Bell. How did you get them to talk about this on camera?
ROBERTSON: We had a dinner recently with some of the folks who participated in the project, including Bryan Hearne, and at dinner he was asked why he ultimately decided to participate. And he said, ‘I’ve been approached by other projects in the past and I had said no, but when Emma called me, I could tell that she cared deeply about me, and she cared deeply about this material.’
SCHWARTZ: I think it actually takes time to build trust. With the people who ultimately decided to participate, most people aren’t a yes on camera from the get go. It is a process of getting to know what their story is, getting to know what their concerns are, and then getting to know what you think and where you think things are. Where you think the story might be going, knowing that we couldn’t always tell everybody everything about everyone that we’re talking to. So it’s a little bit of a balance, and we were lucky to have the time and the support to build that relationship to get to the point where all of these people were comfortable.
Specific to Drake, in the course of our work, we came to understand that in a very short period of a couple of months in 2003, there had been two men arrested on charges of child sex abuse and later convicted — both of whom worked on the same show and many other shows at Nickelodeon. And that in and of itself was a very striking fact to me on a children’s network. As we began to talk to more and more people, you start to hear, ‘I think in the Brian Peck case that the victim was Drake.’ You don’t know where anyone is in their process of dealing with the trauma of healing. He had never publicly spoken about this before. So I wrote, essentially a letter, and that letter began a back and forth and some conversations and a meeting. I think it hit him at a point in his own life where he was, I think, trying to process and deal with that trauma really, for the first time head on. He speaks a little bit about what he was going through at that time in this upcoming episode that led to him feeling like now is the time to share. I think for many people, including him, he had felt very alone for many, many years in what he had went through and seeing the support and seeing many other survivors of various kinds of abuse, say, ‘Hey, it’s helpful to hear your story, so I know I’m not alone’ has been really important and empowering to know that you don’t always have to hold those secrets inside and that there can be healing in sharing.
DEADLINE: There is a statement from Nickelodeon in the documentary, but that’s really the only comment from the network. I couldn’t help but wonder where their accountability is in all this. Did you make contact with the network executives who were there at the time? Were none willing to speak to this?
SCHWARTZ: The statement is a result of us going to Nickelodeon and offering an opportunity to sit for an on camera interview. They declined to put anyone forward. So we sent them a list of questions and the statement reflects what their response was. Certainly we did try to reach lots of former people who had worked there, and it didn’t ultimately [pan out].
ROBERTSON: I think what we’re hearing now from many people who watch the film, [is that] they want to know where to direct the intense feelings that they have after watching. They want to know what they can do to help make things better for other child actors. And it we’ve heard people mention that at the moment, there is no federal legislation that effectively governs children working in entertainment. There’s a patchwork system of state laws, some of the most robust laws are in New York and California. But even those failed to comprehensively cover a requirement for background checks. A few of the contributors in the project are themselves advocating for change in specific ways. Jenny Kilgen, who’s a writer who appeared in the film, has written a public letter to SAG.
SCHWARTZ: There’s others who have been talking a lot about how, for instance, there’s no requirement by law that people working with children on sets to have background checks so that you don’t end up having people who are registered sex offenders working with children. Then there’s others who have talked about whether there just should be more supports through set, whether it’s social workers or mental health specialists where, given the complicated power dynamic of being a child actor, is there a space that they can feel empowered to be honest about where they’re uncomfortable? So there’s a lot of ideas that are floating out, and it will be really interesting to see how that shakes out and whether we will see real changes made to improve the conditions that so many people have been rallying about.
SARLANIS: I don’t think it stops there. Quiet on Set is reflective of the industry 25 years ago. It’s matured tremendously since then. But I hope it’s also a cautionary tale to future emerging platforms. When you think about child’s entertainment 2025 and beyond, that’s social, digital. There are so many places that are currently the wild, wild west with no oversight or regulation at all for children working in future entertainment. If Quiet on Set helps them not make the mistakes of generations past, that’s a really powerful tool. Because I think we all agree that whomever is working with children in any form of entertainment, we all need to do better by them.
DEADLINE: What will be included in this fifth episode?
ROBERTSON: The fifth episode features a cast member of All That who has not previously shared his story. He was motivated to come forward in part by the response to the original four episodes. It features never before seen footage. It features some of the original cast members from All That and some of the participants from the series…and they speak to the video that Dan posted. They speak to the ways in which the documentary has impacted their lives and in some cases, it’s been quite dramatic. We also speak directly with Drake Bell and are able to hear a little bit more about his response to the letter writers and some of the public statements that have been tendered around that subject.
DEADLINE: So these are new interviews that were conducted after the original four episodes were released?
SARLANIS: Yes. We’re joined by Soledad O’Brien, who’s really helping navigate this story because, when you look at what the initial four episodes…[they were] this tremendous deep dive for documentary filmmaking that has sparked newsworthy conversation. So by bringing in, in my opinion, one of the best news journalists out there, it really helps bring that sense of currency to the subject matter.
DEADLINE: Kenan Thompson recently said the documentary should prompt more investigation into kids television. Is that something that ID or Maxine Productions would be looking to do?
ROBERTSON: It seems as though every day there’s a new bit of testimony or expression from a former child star, some of whom existed in the Nickelodeon Universe, some of whom existed in other universes, and we are paying attention to all of it. We’re so moved that the film has started a conversation or perhaps launched 1,000 conversations. We are absolutely passionate about and committed to continuing to explore this story.
