Following the release of Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, Dan Schneider came forward to speak about the allegations against him in it. The former Nickelodeon producer, who was responsible for many of the network’s massive hits, apologized and told stories about working with actors like Drake Bell (who spoke out in the documentary) and Amanda Bynes when they were younger. It’s been met with a lot of backlash, and now Zoey 101 alum, Alexa Nikolas, is blasting Schneider over his video, and calling him out for how he responded to serious allegations that included making a toxic work environment and sexism.
In a YouTube livestream, Alexa Nikolas, who worked on Zoey 101 from 2005 to 2006 playing Nicole Bristow and was in the documentary on the 2024 TV schedule, reacted to Dan Schneider’s apology video. Passionately explaining why she thought the Zoey 101 co-creator’s video was so bad, she called him out for not feeling “embarrassed enough” about everything that had happened:
He’s embarrassed. Like, I mean, sorry, him centering his own what he feels it’s bizarre to me. It’s like you literally, you are awful to be quite honest with you. Awful. You're embarrassed, not embarrassed enough. Not embarrassed enough to go reach out to the people you actually harmed.
Speaking about Schneider’s answers and demeanor in the video, Nikolas explained that she doesn't feel any “remorse” in his response:
I don’t even feel any remorse from him. He’s not even crying. I know everyone deals with their emotions in their own way, but I don’t feel anything from you Dan. I don’t feel a thing.
In Quiet on Set, Nikolas said, via EW, that her experience working on Zoey 101 was really bad, and that she “could not show up to set anymore without crying.” She explained that her “self-worth was deeply damaged” as well. In her reaction, she said that she would have preferred a personal letter from the producer who was fired from Nickelodeon in 2018, rather than this video:
You don’t even know what accountability is, you have no idea what it is. You’re searching for it maybe, but you haven’t landed on it, that’s for sure. This is not the way. I don’t want to have to watch this. I would have so rather gotten a letter from you, for example, apologizing genuinely [rather] than having to witness the whole world having to watch whatever the hell this is.
Throughout the video, Nikolas called Schneider a “predator,” and she pointed out moments in the video that she believed were predatory behavior. She also called out a moment where he said he wanted to call the people he hurt, and she said that his lawyer was the one who called her “to basically sign an NDA.” Recalling multiple reports and allegations about behavior that was toxic – like “exploiting children, creating a toxic work environment,” and “having the female employees there giving him messages” – she made it very clear that she felt his response was not appropriate.
She ended her commentary on the video from the disgraced producer by saying:
I don't forgive Dan Schneider. Not saying I'll never, right? But currently, right now, that made me a little bit more upset, just because that just wasn't it. That wasn't proper accountability. That was avoiding a lot of the main discussions here that were mentioned in Quiet on Set. This was him playing the sympathy card, centering himself, playing the victim. He was a grown adult, and we all know what he did, right?
She was very candid in the video as she reacted to Schneider’s statements about everything that has come out. Nikolas also explained her background on Nickelodeon as well as her thoughts on the backlash surrounding the cast of Ned’s Declassified joking about the documentary in the nearly 2-hour video that you can watch above.
To watch Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, you can stream it with a Max subscription.
