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 Darkish Facet of Youngsters 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 through which he apologized for a few of his habits on the job, corresponding to soliciting massages on set from employees members.
However 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 youngsters and took subject with segments of the sequence that his attorneys mentioned “falsely and repeatedly state or suggest that Schneider is a toddler sexual abuser.”
“Schneider would be the first to confess that a few of what they mentioned is true,” the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court docket, mentioned 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’ll remorse and atone for this habits the remainder of his life. However one factor he isn’t — and the one factor that can ceaselessly mar his status and profession each previous and current — is a toddler sexual abuser.”
Schneider declined to be interviewed for the sequence, as an alternative issuing an announcement that was included within the documentary, through which he denied varied accusations leveled in opposition to him and mentioned that “every part 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 Footage Tv, which produced it; and Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, who directed the sequence. Not one of the events instantly responded to a request for remark.
Calling the sequence a “hit job,” the lawsuit mentioned that in a number of situations viewers had been led to inaccurately infer that he was a toddler sexual abuser, together with within the trailer, through 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 status, profession, and enterprise, to say nothing of his personal overwhelming emotional misery, can’t be understated,” mentioned the lawsuit, which seeks an unspecified quantity of damages.
The lawsuit mentioned 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 prison or sexual misconduct,” and that the defendants’ lawyer responded that there have been no “statements” that defamed him.
Beginning within the Nineteen Nineties, Schneider created, scripted and produced a string of hits for Nickelodeon together with “All That,” “The Amanda Present,” “Drake & Josh” and “Zoey 101.”
However within the spring of 2018, Schneider and Nickelodeon out of the blue issued a joint assertion saying their separation. Nearly in a single day, he largely disappeared from public view.
In 2021, The New York Instances reported that earlier than that announcement, ViacomCBS, the mum or dad firm of Nickelodeon, had investigated Schneider and located that many individuals he labored with considered him as verbally abusive. The corporate’s overview discovered no proof of sexual misconduct by Schneider.
The current 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 youngsters.”
The sequence was a scores hit and stirred up conversations concerning the appropriateness of among the materials on youngsters’s tv. Critics mentioned the reveals contained barely veiled sexual innuendo, and Schneider, in his apology video, mentioned he could be keen to chop out components of the present that had been upsetting to individuals, years after they first aired. On the similar time, although, he advised that the criticism got here from adults taking a look at jokes written for youngsters “by way of their lens.”
