In this episode, we discuss Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a documentary that delves into the corruption at Nickelodeon and the cover-up of sexual tension that was on set and the sexual innuendos that were placed into these kids' shows.
00:00:00.000Quiet on set, the dark side of kids TV reveals the pedophilic predation happening at Nickelodeon in the late 90s, early 2000 and extending even years after that.
00:00:13.200We are going to dive into the details of this documentary as well as draw out lessons from it that I think we all can learn.
00:00:21.100This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:39.320Okay, as promised, several weeks ago at this point, we are going to talk about Quiet on set, the dark side of kids TV.
00:00:48.560This is a documentary about Nickelodeon on HBO Max, I think it is.
00:00:55.200And it delves into the corruption at the network and the cover-up of how exact some higher-ups and some employees of Nickelodeon treated children and the sexual tension that was on set and the sexual innuendos that were very disturbingly,
00:01:23.340seemingly placed into these kids' shows.
00:01:27.220And so the documentary, the series highlights the testimonies of several actors who are now grown up, who talk about the experiences that they had.
00:01:40.720And even some staffers who 20 years ago were working on set with some of these predatory higher-ups and what their stories were.
00:01:50.480And it reveals a lot, not just what happened at Nickelodeon, what happened to these kids, but really what can happen to children in the entertainment industry in general,
00:02:03.100even when parents are involved, when we look at the multiple pressures that are incorporated, when kids become stars.
00:02:13.480And also, I think it gives us a lot of insight into even today's version of creating child stars,
00:18:37.660Okay, we'll get more to that because I know we keep alluding to Drake and not everyone knows exactly what we're talking about.
00:18:56.940So let me kind of back up a little bit and go through some of the other accusations of Dan Schneider that we saw in the first episode of this series.
00:19:04.180So around 2017, videos of Pash Schneider behavior on set started surfacing along with people publicly questioning the inappropriate content and the sexual innuendos that were included in his show.
00:19:15.960So this is one of the good things, the power of social media, that it's really like the democratization of media, that it's not reliant upon a journalist at a news outlet to report these things, that really anyone can.
00:19:30.240Anyone can take a clip from one of these videos can post it on X and then it goes viral and now everyone's talking about it and then a journalist is forced to talk about it because it's, you know, it gets kind of sticky with all of the different media conglomerations and whom is, you know, whom is owned by who.
00:19:50.320And so it gets kind of confusing when you look at all of the different partnerships in media and what journalists can really be honest about what went on behind the scenes.
00:20:00.780So this is one benefit to social media, that social media can actually spread a message that the regular mainstream media can't.
00:20:08.000And that's exactly what's happened as people have dug into the inappropriate gags and scenes that were in these Nickelodeon shows that Dan Schneider was a part of over the years.
00:20:23.440And so here are a few examples of that.
00:20:45.060Zoomed in too often on the tongue licking things or something that just went too far.
00:20:53.140Yeah, there were a lot more examples too.
00:20:55.640I would say like even more disturbing examples.
00:20:57.780And they talked to some of the actors that had been in all that and different shows when they were children.
00:21:05.000And they were thinking back to some of the things that they were made to do, some of the outfits that they were made to wear, some of the scenes that they showed, for example, of Ariana Grande.
00:21:14.380I was definitely too old for whatever show she was in.
00:21:26.580Yeah, some of the things that they show her having to do in her scenes were very obviously sexual.
00:21:34.960I mean, you can just tell that a porn sick individual, a.k.a. Dan Schneider and the other people, I guess, that he was working with were creating these scenes.
00:21:43.840And he knew that they were going to fly under the radar of most kids watching it, but he enjoyed it.
00:21:49.800I think he enjoyed the humiliation of these kids.
00:21:52.420He enjoyed imagining them sexually, and he enjoyed making them do degrading things without them realizing that they were doing sexually degrading things that he had seen in pornography.
00:22:05.740This was true in Victorious, as we just said, Sam and Cat, I think iCarly, several shows included these very weirdly sexual scenes that he says, of course, oh, no, they were just innocuous.
00:22:25.660For example, one of the writers, the female writers, who was really mistreated and actually ended up suing Dan Schneider for creating a toxic workplace, she was on The Amanda Show.
00:22:38.760And one of the names of the one of the characters that Amanda played was Penelope Taint.
00:22:45.500And all right, we don't have to give a graphic description of like what part of the body that is.
00:22:51.760But this writer brought this up and said, well, isn't that like in reference to this like a private part of a male body?
00:23:02.760And Dan Schneider was like, yeah, just don't tell anyone that.
00:23:45.060All these jokes that you're speaking of that the show covered over the past two nights, every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny and only funny.
00:23:59.820OK, now we have some adults looking back at them 20 years later through their lens and they're looking at them and they're saying, oh, you know, I don't think that's appropriate for a kid show.
00:24:16.700Let's cut those jokes out of the show.
00:24:18.720Yeah, so that is that is an amazing PR response.
00:24:25.860It is the perfect combination of pushing off responsibility while taking a little bit of responsibility, acting a little bit humble and contrite while ultimately saying there was nothing wrong with what I with what I did.
00:25:11.480But I also there was a scene from Zoe 101 that one of the girls who was in, I think, the first couple of seasons, Alexa, her name is Alexa.
00:25:22.220She is explaining this backpack scene where something something that prop is squirted onto Jamie Lynn Spears's face.
00:25:33.220And she's explaining how awkward it felt for her because she's the one who's like squirting it on her face.
00:25:39.700And the whole idea of these kids, they're kids.
00:25:43.820They don't understand the innuendos here.
00:25:46.020She says in this interview that the boys were behind the camera, the young boys who were actors on the show, and they were saying what it looked like.
00:25:54.880So, even if the girls didn't know, the boys were saying it already.
00:26:00.740It's so ignorant to say that these preteens, especially preteen boys, would have no clue what they're insinuating with some of these props and scenes and stuff.
00:26:13.100It just seems like Dan Schneider, he obviously enjoyed particularly the humiliation of women and girls because those scenes that we see, because that's not the only scene like that where that kind of action was taken.
00:26:31.300I'm not saying that boys weren't also degraded like the big nose that we were kind of referencing earlier that looked like male genitalia that the boy on all that was made to wear.
00:26:43.940But when it comes to those kinds of shots, the squirting in the face, it seemed to always happen to girls, the female writers being sexualized and being told to simulate being victims of rape in his writing room.
00:29:33.420And it bothered me because I, in the interview, her mom says that she did not report it because she was afraid that she would get in trouble for not intervening before that.
00:30:17.480Um, so, uh, again, like on Amanda Bynes, we don't have that much more information about what exactly was going on between her and, um, Dan Schneider.
00:30:33.060But we do, we actually have a picture of her, um, in court back for, in 2013, she was detained for a mental health evaluation after, uh, allegedly starting a fire in a neighbor's driveway.
00:30:49.440And this is like, not that long after she was in some like pretty prominent movies, um, like for example, hairspray that was in 2007.
00:31:01.080And so something happened during that time, um, that I think probably has to, I mean, it could have to do with a lot of things.
00:31:10.740We don't know what was going on in her home, but it can't have helped that she had such a close friendship and some kind of physically affectionate relationship with a grown man when she was a child.
00:31:24.340What else did this episode reveal about that?
00:31:27.740Um, it didn't dive into it too much, to be honest, aside from what I just mentioned about her, the situation with her parents and him kind of wedging himself in between that.
00:31:38.840Um, and eventually she got emancipated from them.
00:31:43.400Um, I don't know if it was because of that, but he certainly helped, um, do that.
00:31:48.320And so, yeah, he was sort of like, I know there was a lot of tension toward the end.
00:31:52.180He started to show like a more, a less kids show for Amanda when she was growing up called What I Like About You in 2002.
00:32:02.160Um, and that, after that show, I think that was the end of their relationship.
00:32:06.040But who knows what actually happened to her or if he did something to her or she's very candid now about her drug use and relying on alcohol and drugs to probably numb some of what happened to her.
00:32:20.320Um, but I don't know if we'll ever get like the full story.
00:33:26.420And who knows what she experienced from that.
00:33:29.040She probably had experienced a lot of very complex, disturbing feelings in her relationship with him from a young child.
00:33:36.960It's probably like feeling like he's a father like figure, but also maybe a little weirded out that this grown man was in a hot tub with her in some scene.
00:33:45.280And he's saying, by the way, in that scene on the Amanda show, he's saying, I'm the head writer.
00:33:49.560I created this like I'm the creator of the show.
00:33:52.460He's taking responsibility for putting himself in a hot tub with a little girl at the time.
00:33:59.700And so I can't even imagine all the things that she was trying to that she was trying to deal with.
00:34:06.960At the time and what she has experienced.
00:34:22.060Before we move on from Amanda Bynes and into the Drake Bell interview, is there anything else from this episode that we want to touch on?
00:34:31.480The end of this episode basically just transitions into the Drake Bell story.
00:34:44.660He's the one who sent the picture to the 10, 11 year old girl.
00:34:49.780He was found out to have tons of images of child pornography when he was finally caught and did this, sent pictures to a lot of kids in that situation.
00:35:00.760And then they introduced Brian Peck, who was a dialogue coach for a lot of these Nickelodeon shows.
00:35:07.820So that's sort of how episode two ends.
00:35:12.520Unfortunately, I mean, just like in any industry that has to do with that has to do with vulnerable people, whether it's elderly people, whether it's sick people or whether it's children.
00:35:25.140You get both the best people in the world and the worst people in the world, the best people in the world who are self sacrificial and want to sacrifice their time, their energy, their skills on behalf of a population that needs to be served.
00:35:38.260And then the worst people in the world who see their vulnerability as as an opportunity for predation and to satisfy themselves.
00:35:48.040And so you see a lot of these types when it comes to working with children, whether it's in schools or churches even or or these kind of, you know, shows, entertainment industry where there is like a high trust environment.
00:36:07.960And there has to be because for at least a temporary amount of time, the parents are giving up their presence and their responsibility to steward their child to someone else.
00:36:22.000And in those kind of high trust environments, I think the parents are too scared to speak up sometimes and to say, wait, I know better and I think something's wrong.
00:36:31.240And also, I think a lot of times parents are scared to be wrong.
00:36:34.540They don't want to accuse someone of something if it's not true.
00:36:39.560And I think that's what happened time and time again with Brian Peck.
00:36:42.920So let's talk about this, this third episode with Drake Bell.
00:36:49.080And before we get into like all of the details, you already said that Drake Bell came forward as the victim of this dialogue coach, Brian Peck, who worked with him on several shows.
00:36:59.200He had worked on Growing Pains with Leonardo DiCaprio.
00:37:04.000So this was like an inside guy that people paid a lot of respect to, who was very connected and people saw him as a guy who's just like really good at working with kids.
00:37:18.760And so when he took an interest in, especially on Drake and Josh and the Amanda show to Drake Bell, I think that probably Drake and his parents at first thought that this was, that this was great.
00:37:38.260But one thing, Bree, that I just noticed in talking about his story and then eventually getting to the portion where he talks about actually being a victim.
00:37:47.720And we'll go through the details that led up to that.
00:38:42.960So how in the world could this could this happen, especially to someone like Drake Bell, who had parents who were very involved again, like Amanda Bynes?
00:39:36.580And from what he said, he said that he always had eyes on on Drake.
00:39:41.900He always wanted to make sure that he was not becoming prey, that he was really being protected.
00:39:47.860But he noticed on set that Brian was getting really close to Drake and not just relationally, but also physically that they would be going over lines and that Brian would put his arm around Drake's waist or around his shoulders or give him a hug or kind of like stroke his arm.
00:40:09.440And Drake's dad thought this was really weird.
00:40:30.640And in fact, he was accused of being homophobic.
00:40:33.540One person that he reported this to said, oh, you're just homophobic because, you know, Brian is gay.
00:40:41.260So I think that that is an interesting seeming admission there that if you're gay, that's the reason why you are being touchy to a preteen teenage boy.
00:40:55.540That's a justification for that is being gay synonymous with flirting with a minor, because that seems to be that seems to be the the comparison or at least the connection that is being drawn there.
00:41:13.320So he was accused of being homophobic.
00:41:15.100He was completely pushed out and he continued, though, to be uncomfortable.
00:41:22.040But he was put in this really difficult position or he felt like it was a difficult position that Drake loved his job.
00:42:11.800You're getting you're getting too big for that.
00:42:13.500You know, parents really shouldn't be managers of their kids.
00:42:16.980If you want to be successful, if you want your career to really skyrocket, you need to fire your dad.
00:42:24.100And Drake's dad actually confronted Brian Pack.
00:42:26.620But Pack just insisted that this is, nope, this is just what needs to happen.
00:42:32.380And so actually, through a series of events, that's exactly what happened.
00:42:39.160Brian Pack was able to drive a wedge between his dad and Drake.
00:42:44.580And how that happened is Brian Pack called the mom and mom said, hey, or Brian Pack said to the mom, hey, if you care about Drake's career, then you need to help me ensure that the dad over here is not the manager anymore.
00:43:06.140And I'm not saying that the parents don't have responsibility here.
00:43:09.580I actually think both the mom and the dad that there is a dereliction of duty on both sides in various ways here.
00:43:17.060But again, talking about all of those various pressures that were put on Drake and that were put on the parents and making them think you have to work, you have to make this career work, whatever the cost.
00:43:30.620That's probably what led to the successful endeavor of completely alienating and pushing out the only person in Drake's life at the time who was in any way looking out for him.
00:43:45.180And so here is Drake talking about this at Sot3.
00:43:48.940So he started to really drive a wedge between my dad and me.
00:43:53.100He started talking about how my dad's stealing my money.
00:44:26.400And Drake's dad agreed because he said, OK, like if I'm getting in the way of my kid's dreams and his success, then I guess I'm going to bow out.
00:44:37.440I think he would agree with that now, but at the time, I guess he just thought, OK, you know, I guess so.
00:44:44.200And so he backed out of that role that he told his ex-wife, Drake's mom, do not let him around Brian Peck unsupervised.
00:44:51.720Well, she did not listen because the mom lived far away from where Drake needed to go for different auditions and, of course, for taping Drake and Josh.
00:45:01.840And so he started to carpool with Brian Peck.
00:45:06.200Brian Peck would pick him up from his mom's house, would take him in to the auditions and to his filming.
00:45:14.020And then it got to the point where, oh, well, logistically, it just makes sense for Drake to stay at my house.
00:45:20.440And so Drake would spend the night with Brian Peck to go to his auditions and things like that.
00:45:28.300And it's not it actually I forgot about this part.
00:45:32.540But even before his dad was pushed out of the picture, he Brian Peck was grooming Drake, not just on set, but also trying to build a relationship with him off set.
00:45:46.000So Drake is also a musician. He would play in various concerts in different parts of the country, different parts of California and wherever he was.
00:45:54.480Even if it was hours away from where Brian Peck lived, Brian Peck would show up there.
00:46:01.240They would want to talk to Drake backstage after the show.
00:46:05.280Anything that Drake was doing or where he was performing, Brian Peck would end up.
00:46:09.700And again, his father saw this, was uncomfortable with this, but felt like he just had to stay quiet about it.
00:46:17.400And so that is, of course, what led to the normalization of their relationship, which then led to the sexual abuse that Drake started experiencing after he started spending so much time at Brian Peck's home.
00:47:29.840And I just like, my heart just breaks for him so much.
00:47:33.220I just want him, I don't know his faith, but I so want him to be like fully healed and redeemed by Christ because I think that the creator of our hearts and our bodies are the, he's the only one that can really reach down into the depths and fully heal us and give us a new self.
00:48:02.680And in, in actually later in the documentary, it shows, maybe it's an episode four, it shows snippets from the court documents and it, it shows what happened to him.
00:48:13.800And it, it wasn't, it was, I mean, I get it.
00:48:17.460I get why he can't say it, to be honest, because it wasn't just one thing.
00:48:22.360It was a lot of things and it is the worst stuff you can think of.
00:48:53.640He talks about one day he, he was at his girlfriend's house.
00:48:58.500So he got a girlfriend when he was a teenager, he was spending all his time there because he was trying to avoid Brian.
00:49:06.100And one day he was, uh, Brian was calling him like incessantly on his cell phone when he was at his girlfriend's house trying to, you know, tell him, oh, we had plans to go to Disneyland.
00:49:17.260And the girlfriend's mom, go girlfriend's mom, called him into the kitchen and he said, close the door and said, um, what's going on?
00:49:28.220And Drake was like, oh, it's, it's nothing.
00:49:31.620I know he's like, you know, he's so persistent.
00:50:31.640And so I think he just kind of skimmed over it and said, yeah, it's like kind of bad, but like, you know, it's, it's, it's not that bad or whatever.
00:50:46.400That was not the moment that he ended up confessing everything that led to the accountability of Brian Peck.
00:51:01.380Drake kind of randomly, actually, like during the pilot, like filming the pilot.
00:51:10.820I think they had to film a couple of pilots for Drake and Josh.
00:51:13.600He said that he doesn't even know what exactly spurred him to do this.
00:51:17.440But one day he called his mom and he just spilled everything.
00:51:21.500Now, to mom's credit, at this point, she called the police.
00:51:26.400And he does say that he had to tell the police everything that had happened to him in gruesome detail.
00:51:34.060And he said one of the hardest parts was calling Brian and like basically baiting him into confessing what he did, which I just can't imagine.
00:51:45.900Like, I just can't imagine how, how difficult that was.
00:51:51.780And so tell me about Brian's punishment.
00:54:03.980James Marsden, among other celebrities, sent executives, Hollywood execs, letters on behalf of Brian, like speaking positively to his character,
00:54:16.200despite knowing at least what some of the charges were against him.
00:54:20.300So James Marsden, we've got Taryn Killam, Ron Melendez, James Marshall, Kimmy Robertson.
00:54:29.200James Marsden said, I assure you what Brian has been through in the last year is the suffering of a hundred men.
00:55:12.480Yes, and Drake has said since then, since this documentary has come out, that not one of these people has reached out to him or apologized.
00:55:20.660I think a couple people have publicly said they regret sending the letter, but they haven't reached out to him or said anything to him.
00:55:31.880So, Brian Peck, Drake says that he wished that him coming out and being truthful about what happened would ensure that Brian Peck would never work in children's entertainment ever again, that he would go to prison, and that would be the end of it.
00:55:48.700But Brian was sentenced to 16 months in jail, and then he was ordered to register as a sex offender.
00:55:55.980But when he got out of jail, he was hired on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody with Disney.
00:55:59.940So, yeah, he just went right back, right back to it.
00:56:08.440Now, so after the Me Too movement started, that's when these allegations started coming out about Dan Schneider and I think more about Brian Peck.
00:56:18.280And that's when they severed ties with both of them is at that point, I believe.
00:56:24.160So when the trial happened, it still wasn't known at that point, right, about Drake, like publicly?
00:56:55.860Like, obviously, there are problems with Me Too and the hypocrisy of some of the celebrities that virtue signaled like they care about sexual assault and yet had been, you know, cozy with Harvey Weinstein and hadn't said anything.
00:57:10.780But the fact is, is that it did become, for better and for worse, there is a better part of it, though, politically advantageous and even trendy to cut ties with sexual offenders.
00:57:24.400Of course, I don't want something to just be a superficial trend, but if it leads to the alienation of and the accountability of abusers, child sex abusers, then I would say that that is one benefit to the Me Too movement.
00:57:40.820Should it have taken the Me Too movement for that to happen?
00:57:43.760I also think that, like, all of this, and I mean, there's so much more that we could talk about, but all of this just scratches the surface, I think, of what is really going on in the media industry.
00:58:07.400But if this is what we know, and it took years for us to know that Drake Bell was repeatedly raped as a child, then we can guarantee that there is more going on, even right now, even post Me Too.
00:58:24.140And it does make me think about the kind of, like, influencer culture that we have that is not exactly the same as your child becoming like a child actor, which I'll get to, you know, kind of what I think about that and if it's possible to do that in a healthy way.
00:58:45.280But I think about the, as I mentioned at the beginning, like, parents who use their children for content and really commercialize their children, sell products based on their children's image or their interests, so like trying to sell toys or clothes or accessories based on what their child likes.
00:59:06.300They're monetizing their everyday experiences of their child, they're using their child's behavior, good and bad experiences, good or bad, to gain more followers, to get more clicks, to garner more revenue.
00:59:20.280And the reason that it's similar is obviously, there's obviously a similarity in, you know, getting financial stability from your child's performances, but also because of that and because of the audience that you've built and the identity that you have built as a brand around your child,
00:59:44.900there are very similar pressures to keep it going no matter what.
00:59:51.140So there are still family parent influencers that continue to post their child online, to post images of their child in a bathing suit, in the bathtub, going to the bathroom, or, you know, videos of their child crying or having a temper tantrum,
01:00:09.480even though they know, even though they know that these images and videos, that this content is being manipulated, that it is being used by creeps out there,
01:00:21.180that they are undermining their child's privacy, that they are potentially making them vulnerable to predators.
01:00:30.620They know even sometimes about the technology that pedophiles and creeps use to remove the clothing of the images of children that are placed online.
01:00:43.580They know all of the dangers and yet they still do it because they have to.
01:00:47.820This is what their family relies on for income.
01:00:51.300They can't, they think, they can't stop posting pictures of their kids, even though they know it's dangerous.
01:00:56.680And it's probably pretty sketchy to not even allow your child to decide whether or not they want a private life or like a private childhood or not.
01:01:07.560They feel like they can because it's part of their brand.
01:04:46.060And they are angry at you because they don't want to stop doing it or they don't want you to be on set or at practice or at rehearsal because you're embarrassing them or you're complaining too much.
01:05:27.300They don't have to have the private coach, the private tutor, the private lesson with the person that is so good and so powerful and so awesome and has trained all the best, you know, athletes or singers or actors who makes you uncomfortable.
01:05:44.180Do not suppress that feeling, that little inkling of ick that makes you feel like, I don't love how he's looking at my daughter.
01:05:55.160I don't love where he just put his hand.
01:05:58.380I don't love how much attention, special attention he is showing my son.
01:06:17.860But there is a good chance that you will look back one day and you will either say, that was too close for comfort.
01:06:24.780Or I really, really messed up and that you potentially failed to do like the main thing that we are supposed to do as parents.
01:06:34.380There's a reason why God created the family.
01:06:37.380There's a reason why God gave children parents, why he created in the very first chapter of the Bible, mom, dad, be fruitful and multiply, have children.
01:06:45.960Marriage, family, this is another thing that we see.
01:06:50.000So many parents of these child actors and child models are divorced.
01:06:53.460But parents, a family in which there's a married mom and dad is the most child-protecting, child-preserving institution that exists.
01:07:05.320Where there is a strong mom and dad, especially a strong and present dad, predators like Brian Peck and Dan Schneider have a lot more of a difficult time preying upon their prey.
01:07:19.980Now, if they can push the dad out, if they can emasculate the dad, if they can gaslight the dad, if they can get maybe some kind of toxic mom involved to further do that to the dad, then it's a lot easier.
01:07:33.080That's what you see with all predators.
01:07:34.880They first isolate the child away from their parents and especially away from the dad.
01:07:41.580That is also why we see the kind of predation that we see, for example, in schools, like why there is so much predatory sex education in schools where the parents aren't there.
01:07:52.220That is why, for example, you see guidance counselors, psychologists, the endocrinologists that are transitioning young kids, why they are trying so hard to push parents out.
01:08:02.960Why they don't tell parents, why they say, if you don't call this kid by the right pronoun, then maybe you'll lose custody of your kid.
01:08:08.720We'll put them in foster care where they will be free to cut off their brass and identify as the opposite sex.
01:08:15.120Yalie Martinez, perfect example of that in California who ended up committing suicide after the school did that very thing in the name of liberation and freedom.