Disgraced Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider said he owes “some people a pretty strong apology,” in a video interview posted to his YouTube channel on Tuesday, following detailed allegations about his inappropriate behavior in a new docuseries.
“Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” produced by Investigation Discovery featured several former child stars — most from Nickelodeon — who described an abusive and toxic work environment on shows produced by Schneider.
In the YouTube video, Schneider spoke with Bobby Bowman, who played the character T-Bo on “iCarly,” about how it was “embarrassing” for him to watch the docuseries as it aired, and how he wanted to call the individuals interviewed in it and tell them he was sorry.
“Facing my past behaviors — some of which are embarrassing and that I regret — and I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology,” Schneider said.
He created some of the network’s most successful shows throughout the 90s and early 2000s, including “All That,” “The Amanda Show,” “Drake and Josh” and “iCarly” before leaving Nickelodeon in 2018.
The docuseries highlights recounts from former Nickelodeon production staff and actors Drake Bell from “Drake and Josh”; Raquel Lee Bolleau from “The Amanda Show”; Bryan Hearne, Katrina Johnson, Giovonnie Samuels and Kyle Sullivan from “All That”; and Alexis Nikolas from “Zoey 101.”
Some of the allegations made against Schneider in the series were that he asked a woman on the staff to give him a massage and that he wrote sexually suggestive jokes for the teen actors to portray in the shows, which were geared toward children.
Schneider continuously denies these allegations, and, in the YouTube interview, said any questionable jokes should be cut from reruns of his shows.
“Every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny,” Schneider said. “Now we have some adults looking back at them 20 years later through their lens. And they’re looking at them and they’re saying ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate for a kid show. I have no problem with that if that’s how anyone feels. Let's cut those jokes out of the show.”
Schneider said the docuseries made him feel “awful” and “regretful” and there are things that he would do differently if he could back in time.
“The main thing that I would change is how I treat people and everyone. I definitely at times didn’t give people the best of me,” Schneider said. “I could be cocky and definitely overambitious and sometimes just straight-up rude and obnoxious and I am just so sorry that I ever was.”
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