Shocking revelations about the toxic culture of iconic children’s television shows in the 1990s and early 2000s at Nickelodeon and executive Dan Schneider were unearthed in Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which debuted on March 17.
The four-part docuseries revealed a slew of shocking revelations.
1. A penis-inspired leotard and “cum shot” jokes for kids
In Quiet on Set, former child actor Leon Frierson recalled a time when he had to wear questionable attire on All That.
“What really made me feel the most uncomfortable were the leotards,” Frierson said. “I was just a growing boy trying to fit into my body, and it was just out there for everyone to kind of look at and judge me — I just felt very exposed.”
“One week we get a new script, there’s a character for me on All That named Nose Boy. Naturally, I’m in a superhero costume, which is just tights and underwear,” the actor added. “What was different about this, they gave me a prosthetic nose, like an enlarged nose, and they put this same nose on the costume. You can’t help but notice that it looks like penis and testicles on my shoulders.”
The docuseries then shows a clip from All That in which Frierson’s Nose Boy character sneezes and a clear white substance shoot through his nose and onto a woman’s face.
“The joke in that sketch is effectively a cum shot joke,” writer Scaachi Koul commented in reaction to the scene. “it’s a cum shot joke for children.”
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A few years later, another “cum shot” joke would surface on Zoey 101 with actress Jamie Lynn Spears’ character.
“One of the most disturbing memories that I have would probably be the backpack episode with Jamie Lynn Spears,” former actress Alexa Nikolas said. “There were these goo pops and my character can’t get it open, and it ends up squirting onto Jamie’s face.”
“So the prop person comes onto set with the syringe. We all stood behind the camera to watch. It lands on her face,” Nikolas recalled, adding that Schneider ended up “roaring laughing,” and then she heard “the boys” say “it’s a cum shot.”
2. Dan Schneider’s “taint” reference and hot tub scene with Amanda Bynes
Editor Karyn Finley Thompson recalled Schneider “being very close, physically” with child actress and The Amanda Show star Amanda Bynes.
“There were many times that I saw Amanda sitting behind him, hugging him or giving him like a neck massage,” Thompson said, adding that she had always thought “the hot tub scene” was “a little odd.”
Koul concurred, saying, “When you watch the video, it’s Amanda Bynes, clearly very young, wearing a swimsuit in a hot tub, and next to her is Dan Schneider, fully clothed.”
Writer Jenny Kilgen, meanwhile, said Schneider had created a character for Bynes that was inspired by the word “taint.”
“Penelope Taynt is a character that Dan created,” Kilgen recalled. “The taint is the part of the body that’s between the penis and the anus. It’s that skin there. That’s the taint. And Dan had said to us in the writers’ room, ‘Don’t tell what this word really means.'”
“He wanted us to keep that a secret,” she said.
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3. Dan Schneider’s pornography, sodomy jokes, and “volatile” behavior
Writer Christy Stratton said that “working for Dan was like being in an abusive relationship,” noting that Schneider “had fostered this very casual, fun atmosphere” by poking fun at staff, but would also snap and become “very volatile” if someone dared to make a joke at his expense.
Kilgen said that “one of the worst moments” was when they were in the writers’ room and Schneider told Stratton to lean over a table and act like she was being “sodomized” while talking about her experiences from high school.
“She said no at first,” Kilgen said. “And then he was kind of like, ‘Come on, it would be so funny, just do it,’ and everyone’s kind of laughing, too, because he’s making it into this big joke, and she couldn’t get out of it, you know, he’s begging her. So she just leaned over the table and did what he asked her to do.”
Kilgen also said that Schneider was “showing pornography on his computer screen,” adding, “He’d ask me several times to massage him in the writers’ room and in the studio.”
“He would always present it like a joke,” she said, “But you always felt like disagreeing with Dan or standing up for yourself could result in you getting fired.”
Kilgen said she ended up quitting her job after Schneider asked her “Didn’t you used to do phone sex?” out of nowhere in front of all the male writers, after she had pitched an idea in the writers’ room.
Schneider would end up being ousted from Nickelodeon years later in 2018, following a slew of hostile workplace allegations reported to the network in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
4. Racist Nickelodeon sketches
In the docuseries, former child actor Bryan Hearne, who is black, recalled a sketch in which he played a character named “Little Fetus,” who was known as “the youngest rapper of all time.”
“They were fitting me for the Little Fetus role, and, essentially, you’re a fetus, so you’re naked,” Hearne said. “They had to put a body suit on me, and obviously it has to be skin tone. Someone said, ‘The skin tone should be charcoal.'”
Hearne’s mother, Tracey Brown, meanwhile, recalled a sketch in which her son was made to look like he was a drug dealer.
“They set up the scene like he was selling drugs,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, the black kid gets to be the crack dealer?'”
5. “Casting couch” vibes and dogs licking peanut butter off a child
Brown also recalled a scene in which a child actor who was playing the role of a “producer” was getting a massage from a young woman.
“Behind him was a young lady massaging him,” she recalled. “Why are we having adult jokes? Are you showing the kids that Hollywood is a casting couch?”
Former child actor Kyle Sullivan also reacted to that scene, saying it “was certainly pulled from Dan getting massages on set.”
Hearne also recalled a questionable scene in which he was shirtless while fully clothed adults smeared peanut butter all over him, before sending in dogs to lick the substance off his body.
“That was weird,” he said. “I’m laying on the ground and then the dogs come and lick peanut butter off my body. That sounds like some kind of awkward fantasy from some freaky dude.”
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6. Jason Handy emailing a child a photo of himself masturbating
MJ, the mother of a child actress named Brandi, recalled a time when her daughter “suddenly shut down the computer” and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door shut, after seeing an email she had received from former Nickelodeon production assistant Jason Handy.
“She started to cry, and she said, ‘I got an email from Jason.’ It was a picture of him naked, masturbating,” MJ explained. “He said he had sent it to her because he wanted her to see that he was thinking of her.”
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7. Jason Handy’s “trove” of child porn and “tokens,” including a 7-year-old girl’s underwear
In 2003, police searched Handy’s home and found an “enormous trove of child pornography,” featuring over 10,000 images of children that included 1,768 images of young girls in erotic poses, 238 images of young girls in sexually explicit poses, and two images of girls engaged in “bondage activity.”
A CD was also found containing seven video files of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
Police also found Ziploc bags, each one with a girl’s name on it, and each containing “tokens” he had kept from the girl on the label. One Ziplock bag contained a pair of underwear that had belonged to a 7-year-old girl, the docuseries revealed.
8. Jason Handy admits to kissing a little girl and having desires to commit rape
Handy had also referred to himself as a “pedophile” in his personal journals.
“I am a pedophile, full blown,” the former Nickelodeon production assistant wrote in his journal. “I really have been giving in to my desire for little girls these past few weeks.”
“I even struggle on a day to day basis of how I can find a victim to rape if I have to,” Handy added.
Quiet on Set also unearthed a journal entry in which Handy wrote about a time in 2000, when he kissed a 9-year-old girl in her bedroom.
“We kissed a lot,” he wrote. “But I pushed it a little too far. I kept kissing and tried to open mouth kiss her. I could tell I made her feel uncomfortable and I apologized. She seemed fine, but a little less lovey-dovey.”
Handy was later sentenced to six years in prison on two felony counts and one misdemeanor involving two girls.
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9. Brian Peck’s “penpal relationship” with serial killer John Wayne Gacy
Sullivan recalled a day when cast and crew members went to former Nickelodeon dialogue coach and convicted child molester Brian Peck’s house for a barbecue, when he saw a painting “that stuck out to me.”
“It was of a birthday clown holding balloons,” Sullivan said. “Brian got very excited when I asked him about it. He flipped the thing around, and on the back it said, ‘To Brian, I hope you enjoy the painting. Best wishes, your friend, John Wayne Gacy.'”
The former child actor explained that the message was written on a self-portrait of Gacy, and was one of the gifts the serial killer had given to Peck during their “pen pal relationship.”
“At this point, I’m, like, 14,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t know the details, but I knew, like, this guy’s a fucking serial killer who killed a lot of young men and boys.”
Sullivan said Peck then happily showed him a stack of letters and photos from the serial killer, which the former Nickelodeon dialogue coach had kept in a nightstand next to his bed.
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10. Drake Bell’s father accused of “homophobia” for expressing concern about Brian Peck
Joe Bell, the father of former child actor and Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh star Drake Bell, said a Nickelodeon employee accused him of being “homophobic” after he went to production and said he was “very uncomfortable with this guy, Brian Peck, always being around my son.”
“She just goes, ‘Oh, well I don’t know if you knew it or not, but he’s gay, maybe you’re just homophobic and you just don’t understand that he’s a touchy-feely guy,'” Joe Bell said.
“So I told people on the set, and I was ostracized,” Joe Bell added.
11. Drake Bell was Brian Peck’s sexual assault victim
Notably, episode three of Quiet on Set reveals that Drake Bell was the “John Doe” victim in Brian Peck’s child molestation case — a secret that had been kept for 20 years.
Bell said he believes that Peck had gotten “a sense that my dad was on the watch,” and therefore “started to really drive a wedge” between the child actor and his father — which turned out to be a successful endeavor.
Peck made Bell believe that his father was “horrible for my career,” and that he “wasn’t going to be able to move forward with him in it,” the Drake & Josh star said. After that, Peck “very quickly” put himself “in the position of what my dad was doing my whole life,” Bell added.
“Brian would come and pick me up from auditions” and “I would end up staying the night,” Bell said, adding that Peck “had pretty much worked his way into every aspect of my life.”
“I was sleeping on the couch where I would usually sleep,” Bell recalled. “I opened my eyes, I woke up, and he was sexually assaulting me.”
Bell continued:
I froze and was in complete shock, and had no idea what to do or how to react. I had no idea how to get out of the situation. I couldn’t run outside, I mean, what am I [going to do], call my mom, and be like, “Hey, this just happened, can you come pick me up? I’ll just sit here and wait.” I had no car, I didn’t drive. I was 15 at this time.
So it just became this secret that I had held onto, and it became, I couldn’t say I no longer wanted to go to Brian’s house, because then they’re gonna raise questions: “Well, why don’t you want to go to Brian’s?” and then, he’s so apologetic, “Oh, this’ll never happen again. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.” And well, he figured out how to convince my mom and everyone around to have me — any time I would have an audition or any time I needed to work on dialogue or anything — I somehow ended up back at Brian’s house. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And I was just trapped. I had no way out.
“The abuse was extensive, and it got pretty brutal,” Bell added. “I really don’t know how to elaborate on that on camera.”
Bell then told the Quiet on Set camera crew to “think of the worst stuff that someone can do to somebody as a sexual assault, and that’ll answer your question.”
“I don’t know how else to put it,” he said.
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In 2003, Peck was arrested on 11 charges involving child sexual abuse. In May 2004, he pleaded no contest to performing a lewd act with an anonymous 14 or 15 year old, as well as to oral copulation with a minor under 16.
Peck was later convicted of sexually abusing an unnamed Nickelodeon child actor and ordered to register as a sex offender. He was also sentenced to 16 months in prison. For 20 years, the unnamed Nickelodeon child actor remained anonymous — until now.
12. Brian Peck’s side of the courtroom was “full” with supporters
“His entire side of the courtroom was full,” Bell recalled. “There were definitely some recognizable faces on that side of the room. And my side was me, my mom, and my brother.”
“Brian had been convicted, but getting all of this support from a lot of people in the industry,” the former child star said. “I was pretty shocked.”
Bell added that he addressed the courtroom, telling those familiar faces in the industry, “You will forever have the memory of sitting in this courtroom and defending this person, and I will forever have the memory of the person you’re defending violating me and doing unspeakable acts.”
13. Hollywood stars wrote letters of support for Brian Peck, and accused Drake Bell of “tempting” him
Several Hollywood stars wrote letters of support for Peck, and in some cases — such as in the letters from actresses Joanna Kerns and Kimmy Robertson — even blamed the victim, suggesting that Bell had tempted Peck.
As Breitbart News reported, actor James Marsden, Boy Meets World stars Will Friedle and Rider Strong, actor Alan Thicke, Saturday Night Live alum Taran Killam, and X-Men producer Tom DeSanto also wrote letters of support for Peck.
14. Brian Peck was hired to work on a children’s show again after getting out of prison for child sex abuse
Peck, who was a convicted child molester at this point, was hired again to work on Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody after he had gotten out of prison for child sex abuse, the docuseries reveals.
This revelation found in Quiet on Set was also confirmed by Variety.
15. Nickelodeon hires convicted sex offender Ezell Channel
Ezell Channel, who worked at the Nickelodeon lot in Burbank, California, “brought a child to the lot, a boy, and was convicted of abusing that child on the lot,” BizParentz co-founder Anne Henry said in the documentary.
“He actually had prior convictions as a sex offender, and Nickelodeon didn’t catch it,” she added.
“Jason Handy, Brian Peck, and Ezell Channel,” Henry said. “These are three predators who worked at Nickelodeon, all in a short amount of time.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X/Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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