Some participants of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV are calling out producers of the docuseries for not being more transparent about the project being made for Investigation Discovery.
“I’m not too familiar with ID, but for the interview I sat down for, it was not an appropriate network for the show,” former The Amanda Show star Raquel Lee Bolleau said in an interview with IndieWire. “I had no clue it was on [ID] until one or two weeks before it aired.”
Fellow Nickelodeon star and former Zoey 101 cast member Alexa Nikolas echoed Lee Bolleau’s sentiment, saying, “I didn’t even know what ID was, honestly. When I looked it up, my first thought was our stories and the conversation that deserves to be had around them are way bigger than ID and deserve a more credible platform. A more serious one.”
The actresses say that the creators of Quiet on Set, Emma Schwartz and Mary Robertson, kept the subjects in the dark about the project. Although the docuseries ended up streaming on Max, they filmed their portions before the streamer launched.
According to the report by IndieWire, they thought the docuseries was being made by Maxine Productions, and Nikolas said she remembered HBO being associated with it in some way.
“I feel that the sensationalism was revved up because of it being on ID,” Nikolas said. “It would have been curated differently and would have been more impactful on [another network].”
Lee Bolleau added, “I’m upset about them keeping it secret from me. I feel like they did that because they knew if we were aware of the magnitude of how big this was going to be they would’ve had to treat us better.”
The Warner Bros. and Discovery merger and the subsequent relaunch of HBO Max as Max, brought Investigation Discovery titles to the streaming platform, which included Quiet on Set.
“I don’t personally hold anything against anyone at ID or Max right now, but I do hold something against Maxine, because they knew what they were doing,” Lee Bolleau said, adding “About it streaming on Max, it just feels like, ‘How can we make the most money and keep this story circulating?’”
