Nickelodeon’s #MeToo story was hiding in plain sight.

When viewers of a certain age picture the heyday of children’s television, what first comes to mind is often slime. Over the past few decades, radioactive-colored goo showers have become a rite of passage on Nickelodeon, spraying game show contestants, celebrities, and even politicians. As Marc Summers, the host of Double Dare—which in the ’80s helped cement Nickelodeon’s association with slime—puts it in a new documentary exposing the sinister underbelly of the children’s channel: “Nickelodeon wasn’t there to educate you. We were there to have fun, to get slimed, to be entertained.”

Not to worry: The slimings were all in good, if not clean, fun. It’s the other programming airing on Nickelodeon in the ’90s and 2000s that has been shrouded in darkness: the work of TV show producer and showrunner Dan Schneider, who reigned supreme on the network during its peak popularity.

Schneider, the comedic mind behind giant hits such as All That, Kenan & Kel, The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, iCarly, Sam & Cat, and Zoey 101, catapulted a generation of child actors into stardom. But there was no shortage of trouble behind the scenes, as revealed by Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a four-episode Investigation Discovery project that began airing Sunday (and is available to stream on Max). The exposé of the toxic workplace culture that workers say Schneider cultivated illustrates how much society in the ’90s and aughts—and even today—has refused to look at entertainment-industry child mistreatment and abuse head-on. Finally, nearly seven years after the #MeToo movement exploded, it should be impossible to ignore what has been hiding in plain sight all along—including sometimes on television itself.

The biggest bombshell in Quiet on Set took place behind the scenes: Former child actor Drake Bell, one of the stars of Drake & Josh, says he experienced repeated sexual abuse at the hands of Brian Peck, a Hollywood vocal and acting coach who worked on some of Schneider’s sets, beginning when Bell was 15 years old. “It just got worse and worse and worse and worse, and I was just trapped,” he says in Episode 3. “I had no way out.”

Bell is careful to say that he does not blame Schneider for having Peck on set, that Schneider couldn’t have known. All That cast member Kyle Sullivan says in the docuseries that Peck used to brag about being pen pals with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Peck was one of three later-convicted child molesters present around Schneider’s shows. He was convicted in 2004 after pleading no contest.

Beyond Bell’s harrowing story, the series, directed by Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, shines a light on a slew of other credible claims about the environment and leadership style Schneider encouraged. There were plenty of blatantly sexualized moments that made their way onto his shows, including kids wearing skimpy and tight clothing, using age-inappropriate language (an Amanda Bynes character was named “Penelope Taint”), and simulating massaging phallic objects. Schneider’s writing also put child actors in compromising positions, and one Zoey 101 scene mimicked a “cum shot” on a girl’s face (that was apparently jokingly referred to as such on set at the time). As Double Dare’s Summers, clearly in disbelief, watches a prolonged scene in which Ariana Grande, as the character Cat Valentine (of Victorious and later Sam & Cat), fondles a potato, he asks an off-screen Quiet on Set staffer, “That aired on Nickelodeon?”

It’s no wonder, given what Quiet on Set reveals that children in show business are subjected to, that stars, including on Nickelodeon, seem prone to struggling with mental illness and substance use as they grow up. Bell speaks of enduring as much. Bynes has too. And in 2022, Jennette McCurdy, who played the endearingly brash Sam Puckett on iCarly and Sam & Cat, released a No. 1 New York Times–bestselling, beautifully written memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. Large swaths of the book focus on her traumatic experiences on Schneider’s shows, though she only ever mentions him by the moniker “the Creator.”

Beyond the overtly sexual moments, there were other physical and psychological ways young cast members of Schneider’s shows say they felt tormented. One iteration of All That, the groundbreaking children’s sketch show, featured a recurring segment called “On-Air Dares.” In various installments over the course of years, select tween and teen cast members were subjected to challenges that seemed far more sinister than silly. They included taking a bath full of live worms, being suspended and dunked upside down into a vat of dog food, slathering their body in peanut butter to be licked by a pack of dogs, and placing a live scorpion in their mouth. These stunts aired on television sans mass outrage. Essentially Fear Factor, which was popular around that time, but for kids. The only issue? Due to the power differential, kids can’t consent to potential harm or humiliation in the way adults are free to.

All That cast member Bryan Hearne, who in 2003 performed the peanut-butter dare, says he and his colleagues didn’t feel safe speaking up for fear of losing their jobs—and that when they did raise alarms, they weren’t heard. Meanwhile, it seemed as if even supportive and vigilant parents of Schneider’s actors could do only so much. For example, Bell’s father, Joe, says he spotted Peck’s behavior a mile away, but Peck manipulated his way into getting closer to Drake regardless. Other parents interviewed in Quiet on Set, similar to their kids, didn’t want to cause a scene and jeopardize their families’ good standing with Schneider and the network.

Schneider said, in a statement to Quiet on Set producers, “Everything that happened on the shows I ran was carefully scrutinized by dozens of involved adults.” That should be cause for even more concern. In teaching our kids about potential abusers, the “stranger danger” warnings we’ve historically focused on don’t work; rather, they risk leaving children more vulnerable to predatory adults they do know and feel safe around. And yet, we’re still unflinchingly placing kids in TV studios and in front of other cameras without proper protections in place—and now even in their own homes with parents dead set on being influencers, as if the kids are merely props, not people. (Schneider is also extensively described in the docuseries as having been verbally abusive and sexually inappropriate toward adults on his sets, particularly women.)

In 2014, for Schneider’s massive artistic contributions to Nickelodeon’s continually soaring profile, he was honored at the Kids’ Choice Awards with the network’s first lifetime achievement accolade, surrounded by many of his former child stars. Four years after that now-haunting scene, Nickelodeon, which told Quiet on Set producers that it has “adopted numerous safeguards over the years,” parted ways with Schneider following a couple of internal investigations into his behavior.

By now we’ve heard countless credible #MeToo stories across other areas of Hollywood and across other fields entirely. With Quiet on Set’s release, the children’s-TV version of this reckoning might finally stick. Schneider can no longer hide behind an ominous nickname or the paywall of extremely thorough Business Insider reporting; his purported misdeeds are laid bare in the medium that gave him money, power, and fame. The docuseries makes plain, hopefully once and for all, the very real, non-stranger danger that lurks around children’s show business. We must fully face the deep-seated issues that have plagued Nickelodeon, a supposed safe haven for kids. Don’t change the channel.