Breaking the Silence
Sexual Abuse, Spit-Takes, Blue Balls: Nickelodeon Actors Talk Trauma in ‘Quiet on Set’ Bonus Episode
“Here I am a young Black girl behind the stage feeling humiliated,” The Amanda Show actress Raquel Lee Bolleau tells Rolling Stone of one harrowing scene
On Sunday, Investigation Discovery aired a bonus episode of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, the fifth following its four-part series, titled “Breaking the Silence.”
One of the subjects in the new episode is Raquel Lee Bolleau. As a Season One regular on The Amanda Show, a comedy sketch show starring Amanda Bynes, Bolleau fondly remembers making on-set Slurpees, signing autographs, and celebrating her 13th birthday. But beyond the glamor of preteen stardom, Bolleau tells Rolling Stone she felt ignored by the show’s creator Dan Schneider. By Season Two, she was booted and replaced with Josh Peck, who would later become one half of the meddling duo on Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh.
“I knew that I had what it took to shine,” Bolleau says. “I was ready. I loved it, but it hurt me so much, week after week, coming on and really feeling like the Black friend, that was it. ‘Oh, we’ll put her in a quick little scene. Oh, she’ll have a line here. Oh, she’ll play the bully here.’”
In a skit called “The Literals,” where clichés are taken literally, Bolleau remembers Bynes spitting water several times at her face. After the third spit-take, she says she felt furious, was rushed off the set by a director, and was reminded that Bynes was the star of the show. Bolleau responds to the skit in the fifth episode.
“Here I am, a young Black girl behind the stage feeling humiliated,” Bolleau, 37, tells Rolling Stone. “Every time she spit in my face, they had to reset my makeup, reset my hair every time because she was taking a gulp of water and spitting it out in my face and I could not take it any more.”
During a moderated discussion with journalist Soledad O’ Brien that takes place in the fifth episode, former Nickelodeon cast members Giovonnie Samuels reveals Schneider requested a letter of support from her, and Shane Lyons discusses a loophole in the law that doesn’t require background checks for staffers who work with children. Through the five episodes, the Investigation Discovery docuseries examines allegations of sexual abuse, gender discrimination lawsuits, racially charged comments, and sexual jokes made on the kids network. Quiet on Set directors Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz say they began working on the fifth episode about a month ago, following the viral response to the show’s trailer.
“The documentary really ignited a conversation, like a movement of people talking about this space and we wanted to have an opportunity for some of our participants to continue that conversation,” Schwartz tells Rolling Stone.
The fifth episode continues to place a magnifying glass over the once celebrated kids network: O’Brien speaks with Drake & Josh star Drake Bell after he alleged former dialogue coach Brian Peck (no relation to Josh) sexually assaulted him, and All That’s Shane Lyons, who shares new information about Peck’s sexual jokes and the “passes” he made on set. In new interviews about the docuseries, Bolleau and All That’s Angelique Bates speak with Rolling Stone about the humiliation they experienced on the show and the laws that still leave child actors vulnerable.
Sexual Abuse Allegations at Nickelodeon
After watching the docuseries with her family, Bolleau says she was not prepared or informed that the docuseries would reveal sexual assault allegations or sexual innuendos sewn into the kids programming. Reflecting on her experience as a child actor and learning of sexual abuse allegations at Nickelodeon, she says she was forced to face her own demons.
“To think that is what my career was based around, where it started, where it really got its legs,” she says, “you’re telling me that it was rooted in this hyper-sexualized environment that as a child, I just didn’t understand.”
During the docuseries, Bell opens up about his friendship with Brian Peck, a dialogue coach on Nickelodeon’s All That and The Amanda Show, which turned sexually abusive. Former All That cast member Lyons, who called Bell’s story “gut-wrenching,” also discusses his experience with Peck and the “passes” the dialogue coach made at him in the fifth episode.
“Brian follows behind me, and I’m kind of alone in the green room set and he sits next to me and goes — because previously in the conversation they were talking about blue balls and I just didn’t know what they were — he goes, well, ‘We know what blue balls are right, Shane?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, like racquetballs,’” Lyons says in the new episode.
Peck was arrested in August 2003 on charges related to lewd acts with a child and pleaded no contest in May 2004 to two charges of child sexual abuse. On the day of Peck’s sentencing, Bell said he was stunned to see the room was full on Peck’s side of the courtroom. During the court case, 41 of Peck’s friends and family sent letters of support including Jury Duty’s James Marsden, Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam, and Boy Meets World actors Will Friedle and Rider Strong, the docuseries detailed. (Peck was later sentenced to 16 months behind bars and ordered to register as a sex offender.)
Following the release of the Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV trailer, Friedle and Strong discussed the court case in their podcast Pod Meets World. Friedle said he appeared in court with other child actors defending Peck and acknowledged he was on the “wrong side.”
“The victim’s mother turned and said, ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you and it doesn’t change what you did to my kid,’” Friedle said during the podcast. “I just sat there wanting to die, where it was like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’”
During the fifth episode, Bell says that their responses did not change how he felt about Friedle and Strong’s previous decision to support Peck, and that Friedle had opportunities to apologize when the two worked together in the 2012 TV series Ultimate Spider Man — an opportunity Friedle did not take. Bell posted on social media Friday that Strong has since reached out and the two are “healing together.”
“I went many years not wanting to even talk about it at all, not in therapy, not with my friends, not with my family,” Bell says in the new episode. “There [were] a lot of things happening in my personal life that were really difficult and I started to, I guess, spiral is the best way to put it.”
Bell also acknowledged his mental health and substance abuse struggles, following the sexual abuse case. Bell was convicted of two DUIs, declared bankruptcy in 2013, and was sentenced to two years’ probation on attempted child endangerment in 2021. In the episode, Bell says he uses music as a form of therapy, referring to his latest release, “I Kind of Relate,” which references his abuse and rehabilitation.
“I do have to take accountability and responsibility for those things, but it’s really eye opening to get down to what’s the root cause. Where’s this coming from?” Bell says in the fifth installment.
Bell added that Schneider, the showrunner behind The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, and Zoey 101, checked on him amid the Peck abuse allegations. In contrast, Black actors who worked with Peck said they felt “intimidated” and overlooked by Schneider.
Black Child Actors Aren’t Buying Schneider’s Apology
Following the release of the initial four-part docuseries, Schneider dropped a 19-minute apology video addressing gender discrimination complaints, massage requests, and his “over-ambitious” demeanor. On the topic of diversity, Schneider said several of his shows had a lead Black actor but All That’s Bryan Hearne and Giovonnie Samuels said they still felt alienated as cast members on the network.
“The question itself was posed to him about us, it was about us,” Hearne says in the bonus episode about Schneider’s apology. “And he [Schneider] said, ‘Oh, I jump-started the careers of Kenan and Kel.’ So, they talked about us being overlooked and then he overlooked us in his answer.”
Despite their isolating experiences on Nickelodeon, Samuels claims in the bonus episode that Schneider called her a week before the documentary was released asking for a quote of support. Samuels previously told Rolling Stone that the showrunner’s presence terrified her.
“I was intimidated because I understood that Dan had the power to make anybody a star,” Samuels told Rolling Stone at the time. “I wanted to make sure I did my job so that he would not only see me, give me that validation, but to push my career forward.”
Angelique Bates, who is mentioned in the fifth episode, has vocalized her negative experience for more than a decade. Bates was the first Black female cast member on All That and starred in two seasons of the comedy series. During a skit rehearsal, Bates tells Rolling Stone a cast member went off script and spit milk in her face. After Bates retaliated, throwing her milk at the cast member, Bates says Schneider lost his temper.
“Dan completely blew up and lost it,” Bates tells Rolling Stone. “All the mics were still on because we were recording. They hadn’t turned anything off. With that being said, because the mics were on, that means all the intercoms that were in the dressing rooms, in the offices on every floor of Nickelodeon studios [could access the audio]. If you were in there, you heard it.”
Bates tells Rolling Stone that Schneider was forced to apologize, and showered her with gifts for her birthday. (Bates declined multiple interview requests from Quiet on Set producers, according to co-directors Robertson and Schwartz.)
Future of Kids Entertainment
The docuseries highlights something child actors like Bates and Bolleau have long believed: there should be better guardrails protecting child actors from verbal and sexual abuse. The fifth episode of the docuseries concludes with a message for the future of kids entertainment. At the end of the docuseries, Lyons explains there’s a loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 where if a guardian or parent is present on set, other staffers who work with children don’t need background checks. Former The Amanda Show writer Jenny Kilgen issued a letter March 31 to the actors union SAG-AFTRA asking for mandatory background checks, access to mental health providers, and the creation of a child safety and welfare task force. (A SAG-AFTRA representative did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.) To Bolleau, protecting the next generation of child actors is of the utmost importance.
“You can’t even count the amount of sets that children are working on these days, back then you could,” Bolleau tells Rolling Stone. “So that is what scares me and that is where we need to figure out: Where are the protection laws that we’re going to put into place for these kids and for these adults to have accountability? Because it is not right.”