Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV: an informative exposé on the abuses and discrimination children and adults alike faced at the hands of Nickelodeon authority figures.
The primary premise of the docuseries is to reveal to the world the exploitative culture that Nickelodeon had fostered and cultivated; the primary premise of the docuseries is to show how immoral and wrong this exploitation was.
However, now, Quiet On Set and the producers of the docuseries have found themselves in the midst of their own alleged mess—one in which they are being accused of being immorally exploitative and manipulative.
The first instance arose with a denouncement from former Double Dare host Marc Summers. On radio personality Elvis Duran’s radio show Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, Summers explained that the producers had approached him and asked him to do an interview about Nickelodeon, to which he agreed.
While he did answer questions pertaining to his experience on Nickelodeon—of which were from the years 1986 to 1993—he was not informed that his responses were to be used in a show about the culture of children’s shows during the 1990s to 2000s. After being shown a clip of what the show’s premise was to be about, it was then that he decided to walk out, saying, “They did a bait and switch on me.”
In the podcast, Summers explained that he had initially been informed that his interview answers would not be included in the show; however, about two weeks later, he was told that clips of his interview would be included due to his positive comments about Nickelodeon, painting the picture that he had known the people exposed by the show. Summers emphasizes that he had never met Dan Sneider, the primary person accused of abuse on the show, and had actually stopped working for Double Dare the year before Sneider had begun his own projects.
The next instance came when former actress Raquel Lee Bolleau from The Amanda Show posted a TikTok explaining her frustration with the entertainment industry. On the fifth and final episode of Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a panel with actors who appeared throughout the docuseries’ episodes was held. During this panel, the hosts asked each actor about different issues brought up during the docuseries and their ideas as to how the industry could improve.
However, Bolleau’s gripe lies within the fact that the final episode contains an unaired clip of an alleged incident where actress Amanda Bynes spits on Bolleau’s face for a sketch; Bolleau was told to “keep her cool” during it. Bolleau highlighted her frustration by saying, “You want to share my story, but you don’t want to involve me in the actual narrative of change.”
In addition to that, similar to the case with Summers, Bolleau claimed that the producers of the show never explained the premise of the show to her when they reached out. As a result of that, she criticized the producer’s lack of explanation for the show, saying that it has been “very, very difficult” for her to live through these experiences again.
A few days later, The Financial Confessions podcast host Chelsea Fagan explained on a TikTok that she was not told that a fragment of an interview she had with a child actress would be a part of one of the episodes of Quiet on Set; in reality, after reaching out to the child actor and conferring with them, Fagen ultimately denied a portion of the interview being used in the documentary.
Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV was a show made to expose the exploitative nature of Nickelodeon. Now, they are doing the same thing that they had criticized: exploiting the actors on the shows. They have become the exact thing they condemn.
