# Nick, nick, nick, nick Na-nick, nick, nick # Nick-e-lo-de-on! # - KATRINA: For a certain generation, the Nickelodeon jingle is burned into our brain. - MARC: Get some juice in the glass! - In the early '90s, Nickelodeon was kid-everything. It was like, the mecca. - Nickelodeon is the place where only kids win. (KIDS CHEER) It was the starting point of everything cool. - GIOVONNIE: You'd come home, you watch Salute Your Shorts. Are You Afraid of the Dark? - Have you lost your mind? - GIOVONNIE: Everybody watched Ren & Stimpy. God, I sound so old saying... (MOCKINGLY) You know, before when I was comin' up there were no internet, like... (LAUGHS) But there wasn't - We didn't have Netflix and Hulu. We didn't have 10 things to choose from. There was Nickelodeon and there was Disney. And that was it. And you better hope that your house had cable. In the '90s and 2000s, there was one producer who was able to take Nickelodeon to new heights. - It is our great honour to present the first ever Nickelodeon Lifetime Achievement Award to a man who's been making all of us laugh for the past two decades. - ALL: Dan Schneider! - The 2014 Kid's Choice Awards showed that Dan Schneider was Nickelodeon's golden boy. He was their cash cow. He created these shows that were... hugely, hugely successful for them. (CROWD CHEERS) - KATE: He launched the careers of child actors who became major stars. - SCAACHI: For 20 years, he shaped children's entertainment and shaped children's culture. When Dan accepted his award, he was elated, he was emotional, and very few could have predicted his downfall. - Whoo! Try not to cry. (LAUGHTER) Wow, thank you so much. I will warn you... if you were a child of the '90s... this is going to ruin that for you. - What do we really know about Dan Schneider? - KATE: For decades, Dan seemed like he was untouchable. But around 2017, the internet videos around Dan really started gaining momentum. He made them do things that were very weird. There are all these setups that referenced porn. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - SCAACHI: Like, squirting goo on Jamie Lynn's face when she's just 13 years old. - Feel these kids' feet. Wow, they're really soft. - KATE: People were looking back at old scenes and saying, "Dan Schneider is obsessed with feet." Check this out. It's all very gross and foul things. - ...impossible to escape children's feet. - WOMAN: Dan Schneider... - MAN: ...absolutely disgusting. He's a grown ass man. What the (BLEEP) are you doing? There's one video of Ariana Grande making a joke about a potato. Sometimes I wonder if you can get juice... from a potato. (INHALES DEEPLY) (ARIANA GROANS) Did that air on Nickelodeon? (SQUEALS) Come on! Give up the juice. - Yikes. - I'm thirsty! - KATE: In another video, Ariana's pouring water on herself in what seems like a very sexual manner. And people started saying, 'This feels inappropriate for children.' - (SQUEALS) - Looking at Dan Schneider's stars, some of them became extremely famous, some of them really struggled publicly. - After her arrest last week... - Now some of them are starting to speak out about what happened when they were on his sets. - I work with an incredibly emotionally abusive producer. - I did not feel safe around Dan Schneider while I was working at Nickelodeon. All of this information has made us wonder... what was happening behind the scenes. - As a reporter at Insider, I wanted to investigate further. - WOMAN: I've been waiting for someone to question the climate. It's been a long time coming. - I didn't feel safe to say, "This hurt me." - The bad just doesn't go away, the bad stays for a lifetime. It was a toxic, unsafe environment. - I can't sit on it any more, I can't watch it continue. - I want, uh, people to be accountable. - I've been waiting 17 years for today. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Able 2024 - Nickelodeon was a little wild. (ALL SCREAM) - MARC: All right. All right, guys. It was a little quirky. (CROWD CHEERS) - Always funny... but from a kid's view. (CROWD CHEERS ON TV) And in Nickelodeon shows, parents are, like, not really around. It was, like, the kid is the star. You know, sometimes parents are so dumb. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - Nickelodeon wasn't there to educate you. - Put your hat on. (CROWD CHEERS) - MARC: We were there to have fun, to get slimed, to be entertained. I was slimed more times than I'd can care to tell you about. It was part of my job. It's cold, it's wet, it's gooey, it's sticky. - MAN: Oh, my golly! (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - MARC: Exactly how did that feel? - Like my son threw up on me. - (LAUGHS) - KATE: In the mid-'90s, Nickelodeon is pushing the boundaries of children's entertainment. (INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS) - KATE: And this is when Dan Schneider arrives. He's young. He's ambitious. And he has a lot to prove. (JAZZY PIANO MUSIC) - KATE: Dan comes out of Memphis. He describes himself as sort of a... awkward fat kid. - KATE: He's coming from a father who went to Harvard. And his parents do not have the highest expectations for him. He wasn't exactly someone who they thought was going to be massively successful. So Dan is able to find himself in drama. Early articles about Dan say he went to Harvard. But he never actually attended the university. He auditions for this teen movie that's shooting in Memphis and he gets a job. - Hello, Pizzas R Us? - KATE: It's a small role. But it eventually leads to Dan ending up on a really big show. - RICK: He is on Head of the Class which, is at the time, one of the biggest comedies on TV. He was 19. - DAN: This put us on the map, I mean... This got us small homes and this... (ALL LAUGH) We... We get tables in restaurants now. - RICK: As an actor, Dan was cast as the fat kid. - You guys pick on the blimp again? Nice. You could sing "We Are the World" all by yourself. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) He seemed always driven by this fat joke. "I'm gonna show people that that's not who I am. "I'm not the fat kid. I'm this talented writer." His first script that he sold in TV was Head of the Class. He co-wrote it with one of the other cast members. And everything else happened because of that show. Several years later, Nickelodeon executive came to him and said, "Hey, we're working on this idea for a sketch show, All That. "Would you like to write the pilot?" And the next thing you know, he is producing the show. He's writing episodes. - VIRGIL: All That first launched in 1994. The concept was it was a Saturday Night Live for kids. I wanted to make a show for Nickelodeon and I wanted to do sketch comedy 'cause no one had ever really done sketch comedy starring kids for kids. - SCAACHI: At the beginning of his career, Dan Schneider and his early producing partner Brian Robbins got noticed by the press for all of their success for All That. - It's a special thing. I mean, not many kids get to go on national television and play 1,000 different characters. Eat rotten cheese... - We're doing highbrow stuff. - Yeah. - SCAACHI: All That was a really edgy concept. And it established Dan Schneider as this creative force at Nickelodeon. And he helped launch the career of some of comedy's biggest names like Kel Mitchell and Kenan Thompson. - Is chocolate good for congestion? - I have no idea! All That quickly became a pretty big hit for Nickelodeon where they went from, like, a pretty scrappy production to getting some of the biggest names in entertainment to be these guests. (CROWD CHEERS) - I do. # All That, yo! We be coming. # My name is Leon Frierson. I was on seasons four through six of All That. Quinn gotta showered and knocked out by a talking cheeseburger. (LAUGHS) - LEON: A lot of us got our break on All That. I am Katrina Johnson. From the time I was 10 to 16, I starred on All That. Garty! How are you, my darlin'? - KATRINA: Dan Schneider was my mentor. And I remember, my first audition, he was there. All of my call-backs, he was there. You wanna... Sorry. You wanna see something really gross? Look at this. (ALL LAUGH) I'm so flat, it's disgusting. When we were filming the pilot, he came up to me and he said, "I chose you. You are my choice. "And I know you're gonna be great." It made me feel like a million bucks. When I would say, "Hey, I have this idea for this character," he would always listen. And we would usually turn it into something. One day, the network called my parents and said, "We want to see how you would feel if we created The Katrina Johnson Show." And that I'm already living the dream life, but it gets even better. Dan, and he was the head writer, so... Dan kind of ran things. I'm the producer. Executive producer. That's why he gets the headset. I have to yell. In early behind the scenes interviews, you see Dan presenting himself as a self-deprecating and really funny boss. Dan just created a really fun set. Don't know what's taking so long now. Let me find out. - WOMAN: All right, come on. - MAN: That could explain it. - Come on, not again. # Happy birthday # (INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS) (ALL LAUGH, CHEER) Nothing humiliating about that! - VIRGIL: Dan was a big kid. He was always doing something to joke around or poke fun at somebody. - DAN: I mean, OK, These are the breaks, y'all. He kept things pretty light in the beginning. - KATRINA: On All That, he would inspire you to get whatever it was that you needed to get it done, you know? But we were kids and they were long days. - LEON: You know, some would say that he was trying to push them towards greatness. But there's also a... another side. - SCAACHI: A lot of these kids in the entertainment industry are vulnerable. The power balance between a child and an adult is so striking already. And then on top of it you add that it's an employment situation. These are 8 to 15-year-olds and they are often responsible for the entire economic success of their families. What are they gonna do if they get in trouble? What if all of this goes away because they complained? And so you spend your time working, hoping that people don't poke the soft spots on your body and in your brain. - WOMAN: Dan! Dan. Here, Leon, start to the green room. They're there... - LEON: On All That, what really made me feel the most uncomfortable were... the leotards. I mean, I was just a growing boy trying to, you know, fit into my body and it was just out there for everyone to kind of look at and... judge me or... You know, I just felt very exposed. So one week we get a script, there's a new character for me on All That named Nose Boy. Naturally, I'm in a superhero costume which is just tights and underwear. You know, what was different about this... They gave me a prosthetic nose, like a enlarged nose... and they put this same nose on the costume. I'm Captain Big Nose. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - What are your special powers? - LEON: You can't help but notice that it looks like penis and testicles on my shoulders. - SCAACHI: This is a child playing this role. And he is playing it for other children. His audience is kids as young as 6. - I'm allergic to asteroids. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - (GASPS) (SNEEZES) (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) And the joke in that sketch is effectively a (BLEEP) joke. It a (BLEEP) joke for children. - LEON: I'm just looking back at it, it's just very strange. Frankly, it was just uncomfortable. In the... the moments to myself you would just be thinking, like... "Hey, this is what we gotta do be on the show. To stay in the cast and stay in the good graces of the people that were higher up." Some of the child actors felt like they could not push back, especially with Dan Schneider. And so I always did my best to be a trooper. Never complain. 'Cause we knew, being close to Dan, could mean an extra level of, uh, success. It was important to be... to be on his good side. And he made it known who was on his good side. - KATRINA: One day, uh, the producers called my house... and spoke to my parents and said, "Hey..." (CHUCKLES) "Katrina's getting too fat. We already have a fat one. She can't be the fat one." They go, "Well, uh, she's a dancer. She's in dance class, like, six hours a day. There's nothing more we can do." I mean... That stuck with me. "You can't be the fat one." Like... I still hear those words in my head to this day. And it's funny because... shortly after that call, I went through puberty. And then the producers freak out because now I look like a woman and I'm not little girlish anymore, so then that became an issue. And then after that I'm sort of like, edged out... by, like, a younger version of me. - Please welcome 10-year-old Amanda. (CROWD CHEERS) - KATRINA: I remember one day I was at the Laugh Factory. It's a really famous comedy club on Sunset. They would have workshops for kids. Couple of Nickelodeon people had gone to support Katrina. - KATRINA: Brian Robbins and Dan Schneider came and I said, "You gotta check out this girl. She's really amazing." And the girl was Amanda Bynes. - The other day... I got a pimple! - I remember Amanda doing a routine about having a pimple that she couldn't pop on the inside of her nose. - I mean, what's the deal? Is God sitting up there in heaven looking down at me and saying, "I think I'll give her a challenge." (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - KATRINA: And I remember thinking... "You're like 10. You do not have a pimple on the inside of your nose." But that was a really kick-ass routine and it was... pretty flawless. - Dan saw her and, like, immediately... knew she'd be a star. - Over the '90s, Dan's star is rising in Nickelodeon. But what takes him to the next level is when he discovers Amanda Bynes. And he recognizes her talent and he wants her in All That immediately. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - Hi, hi, everyone. It's me, Amanda! Amanda was absolutely natural. Her timing was impeccable. Uh, very physical. Then when a bully picked on me at school, I discovered that music could be used as self-defence. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) - Oh, well, how? Hm? (AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS) - LEON: We had to go to school on set. - BOY: I mean, I was allowed to go to school. - WOMAN: How many hours? - Three. - WOMAN: Three? - A day. - WOMAN: Can you share what— - I wanna talk to the teacher. - WOMAN: OK. - LEON: And so there would be times where Amanda would just be missing. And a lot of times we would just hear that she would be with Dan, pitching ideas and writing. We've seen them grow closer to each other on set. - LEON'S MOM: So, uh... - Leon is the man! See, what we're doing here, um... - KATRINA: The law was that a parent or guardian had to be with us at all times. Parents on All That... I would say they tried to stay out the way. OK, guys. Ready for ya. - LEON: With us all being, uh, novices... With some of us, this was out first job. It was just in our best interest to kind of go with the flow. But... Amanda Bynes' parents were very hands-on with her career. Um, specifically her dad. - KATRINA: I think Amanda's dad kind of treated her like a wind-up doll, like, she had... really a lot of pressure and high expectations from him. (INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS) - LEON: His presence was always felt. A big part of that was his relationship with Dan Schneider. They carefully crafted Amanda's career. It was enviable for a lot of the cast members. When Amanda joined the show... Oh, I had less and less and less and then no time with Dan. So... the new favourite had arrived. I was out. So I felt now I don't need to do this anymore, I can just... go to college. So I did. And then maybe a year later... someone told me, "Oh, have you seen The Amanda Bynes Show?" And I was like, "What? "That makes sense." - ALL CHANT: Amanda! Amanda! - SCAACHI: Amanda Bynes' physical comedy really shines in that first episode. - AMANDA: Sorry! - Hey, it's Amanda! - SCAACHI: And it was her big break, and it was Dan Schneider's big break. # Aaaaaamanda-manda-manda # - SCAACHI: And this is actually the first time that Dan Schneider's name is listed as a creator. This gave him a whole new level of control and power and there would be consequences to that later on. - Hey! Look at you. - Hi! - DAN: I like your outfit. - Nice to see you. Thank you, I like yours too. - Dan Schneider — his decision to have Amanda be the star of the show is forward-thinking is a lot of ways. A lot of adult female comedians do not... get their own shows without jumping through a million hoops. There's usually two roles that girls occupy in Hollywood. One is super innocent, really sweet. Like Shirley Temple, cute, young. And then the other side is... Hypersexualized, built for male consumption. Amanda Bynes was like a new deviation as a young actress in Hollywood. - And I hereby sentence you to be chased by an unpredictable man in a gorilla suit! - Really personality-driven. Really funny. (CROWD CHEERS) - Get that done! For Amanda it's a spotlight on her comedic talent, which is something that is kind of rare to see. (ALL LAUGH) - Ah, that's good. You would think that for this kind of strong female lead to be celebrated, you would have a lot of women behind the scenes. In reality... female writers on The Amanda Show told us that this experience was really one of the most disturbing in their careers. Working for Dan was like being in an abusive relationship. - CHRISTY: At the time, there weren't a lot of positions for women in sketch comedy. It was very hard to navigate when you knew the opportunities for women were fewer. You knew you were going in for the one spot. - This was way back in 1999. There were forums where people would talk about writing and it was in one of those groups, a television-comedy writing group. Dan Schneider was in that group and he had said that he was working on this new television show for Nickelodeon. So I just took a shot and I asked him if he would read my work. And the story that he told me later was that Dan gave them to his Writer's Assistant and said, you know, "Read through these and rate them funniest on top." He was surprised to find that mine was on top and that's what prompted him to call me. (PHONE RINGS) I was actually sitting at my desk at work... (PHONE RINGS) ...when the producers called me and told me that, you know, "Congratulations, we're offering you a Staff Writer position on The Amanda Show." This was, like, a dream come true. - I had been in LA for seven years and so it felt very satisfying that, um, someone was gonna pay me to write comedy. (PHONE RINGS) I remember speaking to the line producer and she said that I was going to have to split a salary with a writer that I did not know. So they were getting two for the price of one. They were going to hire two women and have them share a salary. And I never saw it happen to any of the men. I was like, "Well, I'm excited, I get to stop temping." This was my dream job. I mean, this is what I wanted. This is what I worked so hard for. I'm not about to turn it down. I thought to myself, "Don't be a complainer." You know, "Do whatever you have to do to get this job." - CHRISTY: I remember the early days being a lot of fun. We were on the Paramount lot, which was very exciting. To get to walk around, it felt like, you know, Hollywood. - JENNY: My first week on the job, I got to meet my writing partner. Christy's very easy to get along with. I mean, I liked her immediately. - She was nice and fun and those early days were great! They were great. It was early on, when we first started, that Dan said he didn't think women were funny. - JENNY: He said women can't write funny. He challenged us to name a funny female writer. And he said this to the writers in the writers' room. And that was my first indication of trouble. That maybe this guy didn't really value women in the writers' room. And later he had said that, "Hey, do you mind that I refer to you and Christy as the girls? 'Are the girls in the room? Where are the girls?'" And we both were, like, "No." And he said, "Oh, good. Because I can't stand girls that are uptight about things like that." And when he said that, I knew that next time this guy asks me if I mind something, there's a right and wrong answer. And thank God I answered right. - CHRISTY: Dan ran the writers' room. He was there anytime we were doing any work and he was very playful. We would laugh and joke around and being dirty was part of the silliness. Hello, citizens. My name is Penelope Taynt. So Penelope Taynt, um, is a character that Dan created. - My name is Penelope Taynt. - Yeah, I know. - JENNY: He came up with the name Penelope Taynt. 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. I remember someone from Nickelodeon sitting with us and saying like, "Oh, does this mean, you know, this dirty thing?" And Dan was like, "No. Why would you think— That's, like, tainted. Like, you've tainted something." And they were like, "OK." Man, that is power. That is power. That you can just say you want something and it's done. That's what I thought. So, it got on the show and it's one of those things where it's like, "Ooh." You know, like, "Eh." It's a young girl. And bless Amanda and bless The Amanda Show. - SCAACHI: In one scene, you know, she's praying on a twin bed. There's something so slimy about connecting this, like, sexualized genitalia joke with a little girl who's portraying a little girl too. It was clear that there was a permissibility around these sexualized jokes with children. - JENNY: It was par for the course. Like, strange things amused Dan and that was just one of the things he thought was funny. He liked to play pranks and jokes, which at first seemed fun. - JENNY: In the beginning, I would see, you know, an instant message pop up. Dan would send a message for you to say out loud. Scream "hammers." And you scream it. And then it would be more degrading, like, scream, "I'm an idiot," or "slut." And if you didn't, he would send you the message again, caps, exclamation points, he would scream out, "Say it." until you did. - CHRISTY: One time Dan said, "I'll give you $300 to eat two pints of ice cream in 30 minutes." And I'm like, "Yeah." I've got no money, I've got half a salary, I will absolutely eat two pints of ice cream in 30 minutes. And I did, and I was throwing up afterwards but it was fine. Then the money didn't come and I knew he must've forgotten about it. So one day he said... (FLY BUZZES) "Somebody kill that fly for $30." And I go, "Should I add it to your tab?" Dan took me into his office and he said, "How dare you accuse me of not making good on my bets?" And I was like, "No, no, no. I was— I was just kinda kidding around." He had, um, fostered this very casual, fun atmosphere, but I felt that Dan could be very volatile and could turn any moment. I was... I was scared. (CROWD CHEERS) - KATE: In a lot of ways, Nickelodeon was creating this culture where it was a mini-Hollywood. Like, a Hollywood for kids where all these actors are kind of competing for the same roles, they all know each other and they are in their own little ecosystem. - INTERVIEWER: Are you nominated? - Yes. - How do you feel about that? - Um, feel exciting. I'm honoured to be nominated. I don't think I'm gonna win, but it's still cool. Something that epitomizes that really well is the Kids' Choice Awards, which is almost like the kids' version of the Oscars. - PRESENTER: And the Kids' Choice is Amanda Bynes! - KATE: Amanda Bynes gets the Kids' Choice Awards. She was hugely successful and was becoming one of these massive, massive A-list stars. Thank you all! Oh, my God! This is so exciting! OK. I wanna say thank you to Nickelodeon, Brian Robbins, Dan Schneider. The Amanda Show is on Nickelodeon. - SCAACHI: She was giving interviews, she was on talk shows, she was everywhere. Dan Schneider was very responsible for Amanda Bynes' career at that point and they were very tied to each other and I think she trusted him. My name is Raquel Lee Bolleau and I was on the first season of The Amanda Show. Mrs. Shane... - The Amanda Show was huge. It was huge! We had fans coming and wanting to, like, see us every episode. As a 12-year-old girl, I was over the moon. I was so excited. We'd be out and people would say, "Oh, my goodness. You're that girl on The Amanda Show." It was a pretty big show. - RAQUEL: There was Amanda, of course, and there was me and Drake. Him and I were so silly on this show. Amanda was the star. So, I think we both knew that we weren't the stars of the show very early on. - DRAKE: She's the star so she gets the extra, extra handy-dandy equipment. On The Amanda Show, Dan is the king-maker. He is the one who is deciding who gets a spin-off, who gets the most lines. If you are on Dan's bad side, you kind of could kiss your career goodbye. You wanted Dan to like you 'cause if he didn't, he was mean to you. It's my 13th birthday. People brought me this big, big cake, like, a massive cake. It was great to be able to share the cake with the whole crew and everyone else, but it was told to me, "Dan's really upset." Like, "Why did you get her that cake?" Like, "That's a big cake. "She didn't need that big of a cake." And I was just like... And I really... I felt it. Of course, as a parent you want to speak up, but then I just didn't want Raquel to face any backlash for any behaviours that I had, uh, done. I remember Raquel saying to me she felt that he may have favoured, uh, Drake and Amanda more than her. I remember Dan and Amanda Bynes being very close on The Amanda Show and I think very few people made Dan laugh. You know, and I think she did. In rehearsal, she would say funny things and do funny things. - AMANDA: Uh, yes, this is your doctor. Yes, Doctor... (BOTH BABBLE) - KARYN: I definitely saw Amanda being very close physically with Dan. There were many times that I saw Amanda sitting behind him, hugging him or giving him, like, a neck massage or whatever. Dan and Amanda had a close relationship and I didn't think anything different than that. The hot tub scene, though, I thought was always a little odd. I am the executive producer and I'm the head writer. - You actually wrote the words we're saying to each other right now. - Uh, yes, I— - 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. And he's kinda saying, 'I created this situation. 'I am the reason we are in this hot tub. I am pulling the strings.' - Now, since you're the executive producer of the show, can I have a raise? No. Maybe at the time people viewed it as comedy, but I think now some people are very uncomfortable with the implication. - KATE: For me, looking back at The Amanda Show is really a kinda sad and strange experience. Knowing that as years went on, Amanda and Dan's relationship would take a turn for the worse. It is also bittersweet to watch knowing what the women were dealing with behind the scenes. He became a worse and worse person to work for. - JENNY: Dan called me at home and he asked me if I was conspiring against the company. He said, "If I find out that you did, you're never gonna work for Nickelodeon again." - JENNY: Dan got worse and worse as the season got on. And because I was a first-time writer, I didn't know what was acceptable and not acceptable. And so Christy and I both did things that were uncomfortable. Dan was showing pornography on his computer screen. He'd asked me several times to massage him in the writers' room and in the studio. And he would say things sometimes, like, "Uh, can you please give me a massage? "I'll put one of your sketches in the show." And he would always present it like a joke, you know? And he would be laughing while he said it, um, but... You always felt like disagreeing with Dan or saying... Or standing up for yourself could result in you getting fired. One of the worst one was we were in the writers' room and Christy was talking about high school, which is relevant because we're writing for a young girl, and Dan was just... said, "You know what would be funny? If you leaned over the table and acted like you were being sodomized and told that story about high school." She said no at first and then he was kind of like, "Oh, come on, come on. It'd be so funny. Just do it. It'd be so funny." And everyone's kind of laughing too 'cause he's making it, like, this big joke. 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. - PRODUCER: Do you remember Dan asking you to, um, act out being sodomized? - Ah, I'd rather not. (CHUCKLES BASHFULLY) I'd rather not. I... I don't wanna talk about that. (LAUGHS) I mean, it's not that I'm not, like, I'm not proud of it and I'm also, like, ugh... Thinking about it now, yeah, it's like... Oh, boy. I just think of that poor girl and what she had to, you know, go through. Um, yeah. And I would not do that today, but I did it then. Um, it was upsetting to watch because you know... I know, I knew Christy at this point and I didn't feel at all comfortable complaining to him about anything that might make him feel like, "Ugh, there's a girl in the room. She's killing the vibe." You don't want to be viewed as the person that can't take a joke. It was probably the wrongest thing I've ever seen happen to a woman in a professional environment ever. And then all of a sudden I had heard about mid-season, um, that having the writers split their salary was against the rules for the show. So I called the Writers Guild to ask them if that was true. Can there be teams on this show and they said no. - CHRISTY: Jenny told me this and I was going, like, "Wow. "They were trying to pull a fast one." - JENNY: Dan called me at home and he asked me if I was conspiring against the company. He had found out that the guild was now requiring him to pay for our separate salaries and he wanted to know if... if I was the one that made that happen. "'Cause if I find out that you did, "you're never gonna work for Nickelodeon again or for any Viacom project." I was terrified 'cause I'd never seen him quite that scary before and also, you know, angry too. He had gotten caught doing something ethically wrong and said, "If I find out you told on me, I'm going to do something even worse to you. "You're not gonna work again." - VIRGIL: I think things started to change with Dan. You could feel his presence. When he walked on the set, the crew could feel it. He wasn't the happy guy making jokes anymore. There was a few times when he came down that he lit everybody up. - RAQUEL: Dan yelled a lot. Dan was like a tornado. He'd come in and, like, phew... You'd be like, "Wow. OK. What just happened?" Dan showed up. The set would not feel the same when he would leave because, you know, I think because everybody was on their toes, scared. - JENNY: He could literally be nice and then mean and then nice and then mean, like, throughout the day. So one minute I'm like, "I've got Dan wrong. He's really nice. He's supportive." and then, like, an hour later I could be like, "This guy is scary as hell." We were all feeling, near the end, paranoid, uncomfortable, um... It was just a bad... it was just a bad vibe. We all felt like, you know, the axe could drop at any moment. It was our last week of work for season one of The Amanda Show. I had this meeting at my manager's office and, uh, by the time I got in my car to go back to the office, I had been fired. - JENNY: Dan, basically, owned all of your time. Your weekends, after work, and Christy had done two personal things during the season, like, she had gone to a concert on the weekend and she had friends over one night and she basically got fired for that. - CHRISTY: It just felt very vindictive that, um, it was three days, three more days of... of being paid. So I went back to temping and I had nothing. - JENNY: I went down to the studio to meet with Dan about season two. He said, "Here's the deal. We're bringing you back for season two, staff writer. "We're offering you a 16-week contract, but you need to work the whole season." Which was, I believe, 27 weeks. He was telling me I had to work 11 weeks for free and I was devastated. 'Cause I'd proven myself. I'd written well, I'd paid my dues and he said, This is all the money that we have." And then, meanwhile, he hired a white male at full salary. No credits, you know, first job but he's asking me, second season on the same show, "You have to work 11 weeks for free." I lasted four days in season two. Dan gave us this assignment, asked all the male writers into his office, and left me out, and then he called me in and all the men were standing and Dan was behind his desk. And he said, "OK, pitch your idea." And I pitched my idea and he said, "Didn't you used to do phone sex?" Just like that, like, out of nowhere. I was like, "No, Dan." And he goes like, "Didn't you tell us? Didn't you say that last season, that you used to have a job like that, "something like that?" No. I was destroyed. I went outside, I was crying. I can't do this. So, I did. I went home and I quit. (CHUCKLES SADLY) And it was so devastating. It was so hard to let go of that job but... (SIGHS WEARILY) I mean, I just couldn't do it anymore. There's no way I was gonna be the only woman in that (BLEEP) world with him. No way. - CHRISTY: I was at my temping job. I get a call from Jenny, "I'm suing Dan." (LAUGHS) And I remember thinking... Like, it just took me by surprise because we were all afraid. We're all afraid. That's why just me and Jenny are talking to you. Like, people are afraid of him. The reason I did it was because I didn't want this to be happening to other women in the future. She said, "Hey, um, can, can you write a letter on my behalf?" And I said, "Of course, I will." And so then I hired... I hired a lawyer and started blowing whistles. So my lawyer filed complaints against the production company for gender discrimination, hostile work environment, harassment... Yeah, and in response, they did an internal investigation and they settled, but it had a lasting impact on my career. I mean, I knew that. I knew that this was the end of my career, so it had better be worth it. Like, it had better stop. And to learn that it didn't stop? That it was all for nothing? The Amanda Show was Dan Schneider's first show and he had a complaint against him for gender discrimination and creating a toxic workplace on his first big show that he did. So a lot of the seeds of the issues that we see throughout Dan Schneider's empire were there from the beginning. - How safe can any kids be in that environment if that's how the adult women are being treated behind the scenes? (GURGLES, SQUEALS) - SCAACHI: And on Dan's shows there was always this, kind of, murkiness in what was appropriate and what was inappropriate. - I don't like this. - SCAACHI: But there would be even bigger problems down the line with actual paedophiles on set. - REPORTER: Van Nuys division officers have arrested a suspected child predator charged with kissing and touching a 9-year-old girl, but officers believe there may be more victims. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Able 2024