According to Schneider, the show was a “hit job.”
Six weeks after Investigation Discovery released its docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, Dan Schneider — the writer, producer, and former king of Nickelodeon original programming — is suing the network for defamation.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Schneider’s lawsuit was filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court and accuses the makers of Quiet on Set, an exploration of the toxic and sometimes abusive environment at Nickelodeon during the 2000s, of performing a “hit job” on Schneider. “They went beyond reporting the truth and falsely implied that I was involved in or facilitated horrific crimes for which actual child predators have been prosecuted and convicted,” Schneider said in a statement about the makers of the series.
Quiet on Set was widely viewed when its episodes rolled out in March on Max, a streaming service that gave the ID doc an air of prestige it may not have possessed otherwise. It also generated lots of headlines, in part because it featured the first public admission from actor Drake Bell that he was sexually abused by Brian Peck, a dialogue coach Bell worked with while starring in The Amanda Show and Drake & Josh, but also because of the light it shone on Schneider’s behavior at Nickelodeon.
In the four original episodes and a fifth bonus one, Schneider is portrayed as an unreasonable and often cruel boss who, among other things, allegedly forced one of his female writers to pretend she was being sodomized in the writers’ room while pitching an idea, pressured some staffers to give him massages on set, and inserted sexually suggestive scenes into programs that were supposed to be for children. Several of the actors and writers who worked with Schneider appear in the docuseries and speak on-camera about experiences they allegedly had or witnessed that appear to corroborate those accounts. While Quiet on Set suggests Schneider created a permissive and loose atmosphere within Nickelodeon, it does not say he engaged in the sort of predatory behavior for which Peck was ultimately convicted.
In the immediate wake of Quiet on Set’s debut, Schenider recorded a 19-minute video interview with BooG!e, one of the stars of the Schneider-created iCarly, in which he apologized for much of his past behavior. “I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” he said in the video, which was shared online. He also cried while discussing the abuse that Bell experienced and emphasized that any scenes deemed suggestive in shows like Sam and Kat were signed off on by other adults involved in the productions. At no point in the video does he suggest that the series defamed him.
Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Max, Maxine Productions, and Sony Pictures Television, is also named in the suit, THR reports, which seeks unspecified damages and a court order that will require producers to either edit portions of the docuseries or remove it from streaming completely.
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