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The tv producer Dan Schneider filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday in opposition to the creators of the documentary sequence “Quiet on Set,” which aired accounts of sexual abuse and different inappropriate habits on units at Nickelodeon, the place Schneider was as soon as a star creator of content material.
The five-episode sequence, “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” included interviews from former workers who denounced Schneider as a boss and objected to sexualized humor in his reveals, main him to launch a video in March during which he apologized for a few of his habits on the job, comparable to soliciting massages on set from employees members.
But the present additionally targeted on Nickelodeon workers who had been convicted of kid intercourse crimes — together with Brian Peck, a dialogue coach for Nickelodeon, who was sentenced to jail for sexually abusing the “Drake & Josh” star Jared Drake Bell.
Schneider’s lawsuit accuses the documentary of improperly conflating him with those that had been convicted of abusing kids and took challenge with segments of the sequence that his attorneys stated “falsely and repeatedly state or suggest that Schneider is a baby sexual abuser.”
“Schneider would be the first to confess that a few of what they stated is true,” the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, stated of the filmmakers. “At occasions, he was blind to the ache that a few of his habits induced sure colleagues, subordinates and solid members. He will remorse and atone for this habits the remainder of his life. But one factor he’s not — and the one factor that can ceaselessly mar his fame and profession each previous and current — is a baby sexual abuser.”
Schneider declined to be interviewed for the sequence, as an alternative issuing a press release that was included within the documentary, during which he denied varied accusations leveled in opposition to him and stated that “every thing that occurred on the reveals I ran was fastidiously scrutinized by dozens of concerned adults.”
The listed defendants within the case embody Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Max, the place the sequence was streamed; Maxine Productions and Sony Pictures Television, which produced it; and Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, who directed the sequence. None of the events instantly responded to a request for remark.
Calling the sequence a “hit job,” the lawsuit stated that in a number of situations viewers have been led to inaccurately infer that he was a baby sexual abuser, together with within the trailer, during which a sequence of images and video clips of Schneider are adopted by the commercial of a “true crime occasion.”
“The hurt to Schneider’s fame, profession, and enterprise, to say nothing of his personal overwhelming emotional misery, can’t be understated,” stated the lawsuit, which seeks an unspecified quantity of damages.
The lawsuit stated that Schneider’s authorized representatives had despatched a letter demanding that the sequence “not embody any statements that allege or suggest that Schneider engaged in any felony or sexual misconduct,” and that the defendants’ lawyer responded that there have been no “statements” that defamed him.
Starting within the Nineties, Schneider created, scripted and produced a string of hits for Nickelodeon together with “All That,” “The Amanda Show,” “Drake & Josh” and “Zoey 101.”
But within the spring of 2018, Schneider and Nickelodeon all of a sudden issued a joint assertion saying their separation. Almost in a single day, he largely disappeared from public view.
In 2021, The New York Times reported that earlier than that announcement, ViacomCBS, the mother or father firm of Nickelodeon, had investigated Schneider and located that many individuals he labored with seen him as verbally abusive. The firm’s evaluate discovered no proof of sexual misconduct by Schneider.
The latest documentary sequence included details about how Schneider and Nickelodeon parted methods, and reported that the investigation into his conduct “didn’t discover any proof of inappropriate sexual habits” or “inappropriate relationships with kids.”
The sequence was a rankings hit and stirred up conversations in regards to the appropriateness of among the materials on kids’s tv. Critics stated the reveals contained barely veiled sexual innuendo, and Schneider, in his apology video, stated he could be prepared to chop out elements of the present that have been upsetting to folks, years after they first aired. At the identical time, although, he urged that the criticism got here from adults jokes written for youngsters “by means of their lens.”
