Back then...
It was a different time, so I think it was
a little easier to go to and from a courthouse
and not worry about Twitter
that night or TMZ paparazzi's being there.
On the day of sentencing for Brian,
I get to the courthouse.
It was the most unbelievable thing I'd ever seen.
His entire side of the courtroom
was full.
Full.
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 and...
Yeah, I was pretty shocked.
My mom got up. She had a statement.
I wasn't going to address Brian.
There was no reason to.
I addressed my statement to everyone in the room.
I looked at all of them.
And I just said, "How dare you?"
And I said,
"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 and crimes.
And that's what I'll remember."
In the end, Brian pleads no contest
to two charges of child sexual abuse.
And the judge sentences him to 16 months in jail
and ordered him to register as a sex offender.
But we wanted to understand who in Hollywood
was supporting Brian through this.
So we petitioned the court to unseal
the letters of support in this case.
Letters of support are meant to influence the judge
during the sentencing.
In this case, most of them are asking
the judge just to give Brian probation.
These 41 letters have been kept under seal
for two decades.
Some are from family, some are from friends.
Dan Schneider does not write a letter.
Top executives at Nickelodeon do not write letters,
but some are from Hollywood insiders.
You have the actor James Marsden.
He writes in the letter,
James Marsden writes that he's known Brian Peck for 14 years,
since Marsden himself was a teenager.
Taran Killam also wrote a letter of support.
He writes, "I've seen the effects this situation
has had on Brian, and I know for a fact that
he regrets any mistakes made."
Some other people who wrote letters of support
include the famous sitcom dad, Alan Thicke.
The X-Men producer, Tom DeSanto.
Ron Melendez, another very well-known actor.
Rider Strong wrote a letter of support for Brian.
And Will Friedle from Boy Meets World.
We don't know exactly what these people were told about
Brian's crimes before they wrote the letters.
And we don't know which of these people, if any,
were in the courtroom for Brian's sentencing.
But these letters show how strong the support
for Brian Peck was with people with industry connections.
Outside of these individuals, there were over a dozen
other letter writers who used similar language
to blame the victim, saying that this
wouldn't have happened unless Brian was tempted.
Joanna Kerns, who met Brian when she was acting
on Growing Pains, wrote, "I can only believe that
there must have been some extreme situation or temptation
exerted upon him to influence his actions."
Kimmy Robertson is an actress.
She wrote,
This logic is just victim-blaming.
When this minor suffered at the hands of an adult
who was in a very senior, almost parental position to them.
There are people who worked with Brian and Drake
on The Amanda Show,
like the director, Rich Correll,
and the stage manager, Beth Correll.
Rich says that,
"it would be my pleasure to work with him again."
In fact, Brian Peck does end up working with the Corrells again
on the Disney Channel show, Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
It shows that there are not enough protections in place
to keep even convicted sexual predators off of kids' TV shows.
In 2005, there was another case.
Ezell Channel, a worker at the Nickelodeon lot
in Burbank, he brought a child to the lot,
a boy, and was convicted of abusing that child on the lot.
He actually had prior convictions as a sex offender,
and Nickelodeon didn't catch it.
Jason Michael Handy,
Brian Peck,
and then Ezell Channel.
These are three predators who worked at Nickelodeon,
all in a short amount of time.
Around this time, Nickelodeon did expand its policy
around background checks to include freelancers.
When you look at having multiple child predators
who worked at Nickelodeon, it raises some confusing questions
on who to hold accountable.
I don't think that you can blame Schneider
for hiring Brian Peck because he was not
a registered sex offender when he hired him.
Drake very explicitly does not blame Dan for any of this.
But it's clear that the system needs to look at
if it is doing enough to protect children.
Oh, that's not so bad.
- It's not so bad? - No, it's all right.
After these arrests, Nickelodeon only grows.
Hey. Thank you for being here.
Jamie, this way!
It was actually my first time acting on TV,
so it's really fun for me.
The mid-2000s is somewhat of a golden era for Nickelodeon.
There is a spate of popular new shows.
Dan Schneider is helping launch a new era of breakout stars.
Jamie Lynn Spears in Zoey 101.
- Zoey! - Hi!
Hi!
Victoria Justice in Victorious.
Just let me...
Ariana Grande, who we now know
as a very famous pop star, and Jeanette McCurdy in Sam and Cat.
I am really smart.
This is also the time that Drake and Josh really takes off.
If you've got a tween to a teen in the house,
then you know Drake and Josh.
People know you from the Drake and Josh Show
on Nickelodeon, hugely popular.
Nickelodeon is making a lot of money,
and Dan Schneider is becoming even more successful
and more powerful, an even bigger name in his own right.
His shows are cultural juggernauts,
especially iCarly starring Miranda Cosgrove.
I'm Carly Shay, and this is our very first webcast
of a little show we call iCarly.
If you've got a child aged nine to 12,
or even a daughter like mine who's 14,
chances are she's watched Nickelodeon's iCarly.
It is a ratings blockbuster.
And that's our show!
It hit at just a particular cultural moment.
It was the early years of the Internet.
ICarly is this Internet show.
It felt cutting edge to teenagers who saw it.
This is pre-YouTube generation.
So there was also this component of real life
that I think hit people in a way that his other shows didn't.
And because it did, it just exploded.
At one point, they did an episode
where Michelle Obama shows up on it.
I'm on iCarly!
With the success of iCarly, Dan is able to
consolidate power at Nickelodeon in a whole new way.
And this is around the time that the Disney Channel
starts truly competing with Nickelodeon.
They had massive hits like Hannah Montana
and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
So as Nickelodeon is facing all of this competition,
Dan is their answer.
It really launches Dan into this whole new level of stardom.
He's Dan Schneider, a man with a gift,
the gift of knowing what is funny to people of
a certain age, say, 12 or nine.
What do you got going that other folks aren't figuring out?
For one thing, I am always trying to outdo
the last thing that I did.
Fred Wad.
Dan Schneider was always really tech-savvy.
He loves technology.
And so when the web started becoming popular,
he was one of the first people out there, you know,
doing videos.
Oh, she almost sits, but she fakes out the cameraman, which is me.
Posting videos on social media and original stuff.
Some of these seem pretty innocuous,
where it's Dan recording the editing bay.
I'm in the editing room of iCarly,
and we're working on the next episode.
Okay, take one.
Or the writer's room.
Okay, this is Dan Schneider.
I'm here with some of the iCarly writers.
Hello, iCarly writers.
But in these videos, you can really see the power play
between him and his cast.
It's a lot of him getting into people's physical space,
and you can see palpable discomfort on people's faces.
Trying to scare Jeanette.
There's one video in particular where Dan
creeps behind Jeanette
It scares her.
My gosh, that scared me so much.
But she can't say, I didn't like that,
or she can't not have a sense of humor about it,
and she can't not play with it,
because she has to.
Oh.
You have to be nice, because that's the only way
that you're gonna get through.
Whoo!
For Dan, it was about power at that point.
And when you are someone who wants more and more power,
eventually you're gonna fly too close to the sun.
One, two, three!
The kid audience is definitely my bread and butter.
I mean, that's what I'm paid to do.
I'm paid to get kids all the way from six to 14
glued to TV sets.
That's my goal. That's the sweet spot.
By the late 2000s, Dan had more control than
pretty much any showrunner at Nickelodeon.
He had created his own little fiefdom.
All right, we're getting ready to fly.
But his style had a little bit of edge in it.
It also really pushed the boundaries of sexualizing
young girls.
It's so cold!
Wanna get slapped with a sausage?
Sure.
There are jokes about being slapped with a sausage.
There's a joke about being on the wood.
I want to be on the wood. What's the wood? I want to be on it.
You have actors shaking weights in a way
that seems very clearly sexual.
And these actors, for the most part, are minors.
♪ Gonna make it on my own
Another of Dan's shows, Zoey 101,
is this high school boarding school,
California experience.
I was 12 years old when I started Zoey 101.
Ooh, cute boy to the left, green shirt, backpack.
When I look back at it, my character
was there for the boys.
Nicole was the archetype of male gaze female,
where she was girly, very short,
short skirts and pink.
Like kid eye candy.
How about this top? You like this top?
It makes me look chesty.
We don't need to be hyper-conservative of bodies,
but that didn't represent even me as a girl at that age.
Definitely Dan liked cute, pretty, flirty.
I worked in the wardrobe department on Zoey 101.
I always thought that Dan had a little bit of
an arrested development, and he was like that boy that
wanted the cute girl to like him.
I cannot believe I have two book reports due in one month.
You put these girls in bikinis
and bathing suits, which is fine.
I think teenage girls should feel free to wear whatever they'd like.
But when you are using nubile sexuality
as a marketing tool, that's where it gets sticky.
One of the most disturbing memories that I have
would probably be the backpack episode
with Jamie Lynn Spears.
You just bite the tip.
There are these goo pops, and my character
can't get it open.
It's not coming out.
And it ends up...
Squirting onto Jamie's face.
So the prop person comes onto set with a syringe.
We all, like, stood behind the camera to watch.
It lands on her face.
So first it was Dan roaring, laughing,
and then everyone kind of giggling.
We heard the boys saying, "It's a shot."
And I had no idea...
What that meant.
Once I saw it again as an adult
was when that memory came back.
I was like, "Oh, oh, oh, oh."
Wasn't funny.
It still isn't funny to me, to be honest.
It's just like, that's a kid.
And she was on set that day and...
Sorry. Just as a mom, like,
If my daughter was ever put in the... It's gross.
Like, there's just...
It's appalling behavior on all the adults' behalf that day.
In my mind, a kids' show should be
exactly what it is, a kids' show.
And sometimes there were scenes where there was a prop
that was like...
What's he doing?
Hmm, that could be a sexual innuendo.
Those are good ones.
Mmm.
Dan went overboard and just zoomed in too often on the feet.
Wow, they're really soft.
Zoomed in too often on the tongue licking things
or something that just went too far.
Was anyone able to say anything or is that like...
Oh, no, no. This is, it's Dan's baby.
Dan was Nickelodeon's golden boy.
And even if he and the network were at odds,
he had the power to push back.
It was very hard to say anything to him.
And his show, Victorious, took this to a whole new level.
With that show, there were online extras that
the network did not fully know how to deal with.
Time for your nap, tomatoes.
In some of them, you see Ariana putting tomatoes in a bra.
Check this out.
There are several scenes with Ariana Grande
that are really I think almost difficult to see
as anything but sexual watching them now.
Mmm, I'm thirsty.
She's effectively massaging
a potato.
Come on, give up the juice.
That's a little...
shaped perhaps.
We're adults, so we know what's going on,
but this is a show for kids.
So...
Who is sexual innuendo for on a kids show?
Help me up on this thing.
It's legal and there's nothing actionable about it,
Just lift me.
...But there is a nebulousness around it,
but it's morally murky.
At the end of the day, I love it when the cast gets
sassy with me because I get to write all the scripts
with some very talented writers,
but I get to, I can put them in
any horrible predicament I choose.
You can touch their hair, you can take a picture with them,
you can ask them personal questions,
inappropriate ones, whatever you want to do.
Dan, he behaved in a way that was pretty concerning
and problematic, especially when it comes to women,
and how he treated people as a boss on set.
Something that was always really uncomfortable
was walking onto set and seeing who Dan
had talked into giving him a massage.
It was almost always a female and it was often one
from the wardrobe department.
It was humiliating.
I remember one time sitting next to a colleague
and she got a text from him saying,
"Come and massage me on the set."
and she said, "My God, doesn't he know I'm doing
two shows?
I'm so busy," and I could see that
she was distraught, but she went anyway.
It definitely felt like a form of sexual harassment.
There was always someone massaging him.
That's, like, all I remember was some person on set
massaging that guy.
Dan was asking for this incredibly inappropriate thing
for almost two decades.
He was asking people at work to touch him.
Everyone knew it, from New York to California.
So who would we go to?
Who could we possibly go to to complain about this?
Nickelodeon could have been there
to be a buffer more than they were.
And I don't think the network was ever close to doing that.
Why wouldn't anybody do anything? Why didn't they stop him?
It felt like somebody needed to rein him in,
and he wasn't reined in.
In 2014, we have the Kids' Choice Awards.
This is Nickelodeon's big night to celebrate their stars.
As far as award shows or anything goes,
Nickelodeon always does it the funnest, you know what I mean?
Nickelodeon is known for being fun and messy and gross.
It's also the awards where Dan is being celebrated.
I'm happy to be here to honor Dan.
He's created so many amazing shows.
Dan Schneider wins his Lifetime Achievement Award.
He is surrounded by so many different people from all his shows.
They're talking about how great he is.
Thank you, Dan.
You're an inspiration!
Speaking about how key he was to their careers.
You not only changed all of our lives,
you changed Kids TV.
But there is one person that does not show up.
And that is Jeanette McCurdy,
who was the co-star on Sam and Cat.
People were just thinking, "Oh, that's odd."
She's one of the primary people on one of his shows.
She's been with this guy forever.
Why is she not there?
Eight years later, Jeanette McCurdy publishes
a memoir about her life as a child star,
about the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her mother.
But the memoir also answers a lot of really complicated questions
about working as a child actor and about Dan Schneider,
who she began working with around age 13.
You pull back the curtain on child stardom.
- It is not a pretty picture. - Not as I see it, no.
In Jeanette's memoir, she writes about
an unnamed television show creator,
and a lot of people have speculated that
that person is Dan Schneider.
She writes, "I feel like The Creator
has two distinct sides.
One is generous and over-the-top complimentary.
The other side is mean-spirited,
controlling, and terrifying."
She's also talked in a podcast about how this treatment felt abusive.
There was a very abusive producer on that show,
and that would not have gone well
if I tried to communicate that to him.
"He'll call people idiots, buffoons, stupid,
dumb, sloppy, careless, and spineless.
The creator knows how to make someone feel worthless."
Dan's treatment of people on his shows was an open secret.
For the crew, if you messed up,
even if it was a minor mistake,
Dan would be someone who would be willing to humiliate you
or fire you on the spot.
The description I got from someone was that everything
that Dan Schneider did is a DEFCON ten event.
Dan Schneider was convinced that everything that he did,
the, quote, "Passion of the way he reacted
and the way that he approached people,"
that's what made this magic happen.
That's what made these shows a success.
Culturally, we are still doing the tortured genius routine.
So if a guy's a total piece of ,
he must be so good at his job.
There's a lot of abuse that happens.
I mean, even talking about it now, my face gets hot.
You know, he'd say things like,
"You would work at Yogurtland if you didn't work for me."
And he would just scream.
Jeanette's experience gets a lot worse on Sam and Cat.
And this is happening at the same time Jeanette's mom dies.
She took less than a week break from filming.
And her quick return is something that people on set
told us that they were disturbed by.
The situation got so stressful on the set of Sam and Cat.
Nickelodeon launched an internal investigation.
I learned that Dan is seen as kind of contributing
to this toxic culture that is happening
and that is really making this show a difficult place
for many people to work.
After the investigation, Dan Schneider
was no longer allowed to really interact with the cast anymore.
Dan has always been such a hands-on showrunner,
so for Dan, this is the biggest punishment you can imagine.
When you look at the industry as a whole, this never happens.
You would be hard-pressed to find another show
where they're saying, "Look, we don't trust the guy
running the show
to deal with people in a humane way."
But they also don't want to get rid of him.
He creates hits.
There's money to be made.
Dan Schneider can get away with it because he's Dan Schneider.
And powerful people in the entertainment space
will make allowances for anybody who is successful.
Until something happens that you cannot ignore.
In 2017, three years after Dan is banned from working
directly with his own actors on the set of Sam and Cat,
he's back on set at Nickelodeon with two new shows,
Henry Danger and Game Shakers.
I booked you a massage with the massage squad.
But around this time, something has shifted
culturally around workplace harassment and toxicity.
Millions of women across the country
- using the hashtag MeToo. - MeToo.
The MeToo phenomenon.
Several allegations of sexual harassment
against Harvey Weinstein.
This morning, Kevin Spacey,
- Undersire, - R. Kelly, Bill Cosby.
The MeToo movement exploding overnight.
And the accusations just keep coming.
I decided I'd had enough when the MeToo movement
made it okay to talk about hostile work environments.
I felt like I could finally call up my union
and let them know that there had been some stuff
going on that it was inappropriate that
he asked for massages from females weekly
if not daily and this is not right.
Something has to be done.
The union representative said I wasn't the only one
who had shown my shock and displeasure that
this was allowed to go on.
And that they were looking into it.
A lot of rumors were circulating around
Dan Schneider, and these really exploded online.
In 2017, Nickelodeon launches yet
another investigation into Dan Schneider.
It's not because they have a smoking gun,
it's because the Me Too movement has helped us
sort of rethink and reevaluate what we think is appropriate
and not appropriate in the workplace.
And then my supervisor actually called me
and told me that...
Yeah, Dan wouldn't be coming back.
For Dan to be ousted from Nickelodeon is a huge shock.
He did not see this coming.
He issues a couple statements, basically,
"Oh, you know, I need some time off.
I'm just, you know, I'm working on my life."
But behind the scenes.
Nickelodeon literally changes the locks of this place
that he turned into an empire.
They gave him an amount that was reported at the time
at about $7 million.
You know, it was just a really quick, really sharp break.
This investigation did not find any evidence of
inappropriate sexual behavior, inappropriate relationships with children.
Jerry, I'm going to push--
But it did find evidence of being abusive to others
in the workplace.
So to hear that he was gone was a good thing.
It was a very good thing. It was a happy day.
When everyone did come back, it was a much happier workplace.
I remember reading that Dan was no longer
going to be under contract at Nickelodeon,
and I can remember exactly where I was.
It didn't surprise me.
They should have fired him a long time ago.
Dan is no longer at Nickelodeon,
and he hasn't made a new TV show in a number of years.
In 2021, he told The New York Times, kind of,
I'm ready to reemerge in children's television.
I mean, I don't see how he comes back from it.
I'm sure he wants to, but I don't see how it happens.
Let's please collectively not let another Dan happen.
Like, he cannot happen again.
Like, this is not a joke.
A lot of his shows are still on the air,
and they're still really popular.
But those kids who grew up on Dan Schneider's sets
and in the entertainment industry
are adults now, and they are reexamining
the world that they grew up in.
Towards the end of season two of Zoey 101...
I wasn't happy.
I actually could not show up to set anymore without crying.
A lot of my self-worth was deeply damaged
from that set experience.
Me as a person was, like, altered for life.
Being let go from The Amanda Show
really broke my confidence big time.
That was a very young lesson to learn in my career,
is that everyone is replaceable.
And it sent me down a really dark path.
I had to really, like, pick myself back up
and keep it moving in an industry
that showed me very early on that it has no love for me at all.
Being a child star hurt me mentally
and somewhat physically.
The alcoholism that I've dealt with,
I believe, is a direct connection to the feelings that
I have after leaving the industry
and not being able to maintain the success that I had.
After All That, I was burned out,
and I was excited for the next chapter.
I was excited to maybe try college,
being normal a little bit.
But, you know, not everybody gets to be normal afterwards
because you don't know what that looks like.
When I was on All That, it was a sweet experience,
but the bittersweet, the bitter side of the
bitter sweet was pretty bitter.
There's a dark underbelly to child stardom.
Children are just a dollar sign when they show up on set.
Nobody's taking anyone's mental health serious,
and that's completely unfortunate.
I struggled with self-esteem issues.
I struggled with beauty standards.
'Cause I didn't feel accepted.
There you go.
It was a toxic environment and seeing how the show
just kept on rolling and these people who were criminals
were disappeared,
it made me quite cynical about the reality of
power dynamics and it made me trust people less.
Drake, can you look right at this way, please?
Right after Drake and Josh, I was signed,
and then I released my second album.
I made some really cool movies,
but I would have stints of sobriety,
and then I would...
You know, the pressure would be too much,
and...
All of these demons that I had, um...
Were very difficult to...
To work through.
And so I think a lot of my self-destructive behavior
would always just be a temporary fix,
and it would always creep back up.
I went through this bankruptcy and lost my house, and...
I mean, it was absolutely devastating.
Hey, what's up, Glenn?
- Cory, can we get a picture, please? - Glenn, can we get a sign?
We can go on and on and on of child actors
or child entertainers who had cameras
watching every single downfall.
- Brittany. - Hello? Did you have fun in there, Brittany?
Lindsay, do you have anything to say to Brittany?
Look at what happens to these kids when they're spat out.
They end up quite sick.
They have issues with addiction.
Eddie.
How are you?
Aaron Carter.
One of those days, Aaron, you know?
Amanda Bynes, arrested, hauled out of
her midtown Manhattan apartment.
Arrested, allegedly smoking marijuana.
You just wonder, how low is the bottom?
When I think of Amanda,
it's like so painful.
She was hospitalized for a mental health evaluation.
Because we are talking about a very talented young woman.
Someone who had the entire world at her fingertips.
Amanda Bynes is a very prototypical child star story.
As she entered adulthood, it seemed like
she was struggling with the transition.
She had a lot of public mental health issues
that tabloids covered.
She ended up in a conservatorship
with her parents, and that was very recently overturned.
Child stars' relationships with their families often
are starting from a place of discontent,
and then they get worse. They don't have childhoods
like kids are supposed to have.
- And look up. - Okay, ready.
There was definitely a slow decline
in my mental health and sobriety.
I mean, DUIs,
um, behaviors that were happening
because I was...
I... I was lost.
Nickelodeon's Drake Bell is arrested in California,
accused of driving under the influence.
Former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell was convicted
and sentenced for child endangerment.
Drake Bell pled guilty to charges related
to inappropriate text messages he sent to a minor,
but he was not charged for doing anything physical.
He was sentenced to two years of probation
and 200 hours of community service.
I took responsibility for that.
You know, I did what was asked of me.
But the media grabbed ahold of so much misinformation,
and it absolutely destroyed me.
And I started to spin out of control.
Actor Drake Bell has been reported missing.
Police say they are deeply concerned for his well-being.
If I had continued down that path, that...
Could very likely...
Be the end of my story.
I was at rock bottom.
And so I checked into treatment.
And I got to go through a lot of trauma therapy,
a lot of grief therapy,
and be surrounded by
people who,
for the first time in a long time...
...wanted to just see me get better.
For child actors, if you're not protected,
it'll turn into chaos.
There's gotta be more support in terms of counseling,
mental health, wellness checks.
Kids are still at risk.
The law does not cover everyone operating on a set
because that's an environment where either a studio teacher
or a parent is legally required to be within
sight or sound of the kid at all times.
That's just not enough.
Someone who has a criminal record as a child sex offender
can find their way into this position,
that loophole in the law should be closed.
Most people actually financially reward
these industries without knowing what's actually happening,
you know, behind the scenes.
It unfortunately takes the people that witnessed it
and experienced it to speak up to really change it.
My hope is that with every voice that comes out,
something changes.
Maybe today's the day.
I don't know.
When people ask me, am I going to put my kids into acting,
I literally have zero, zero thought
before my no.
I'm often asked the question, "You grew up in the business
and is this a good place for kids? And...
And, you know, it's such a, a hard question to answer
because I wanted nothing more in life,
but to get on stage.
There is so much in this industry
that you have to be cautious of,
but...
Would I want the experiences that I've had,
the good experiences that I've had, ripped away from me?
I don't know what the answer is
and I don't have the power to do it,
but I would love to be able to create an environment where
we're not so vulnerable
and susceptible to...
Outside dangers.
It's just, it's really hard going back
over these old memories.
Oh, well, you know what?
There's better days ahead of us.
Yeah, I keep hearing that.
Yeah, well, keep listening to it.