Raquel Lee Bolleau and Alexa Nikolas, who are the subjects on the five-part documentary, share that the show and its directors deceived them during interviews.
- Apr 19, 2024
AceShowbiz - "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" hopes to expose the shady side of children's entertainment, especially the work atmosphere on Nickelodeon under Dan Schneider. Ironically, the team of the documentary is now accused of unethical filming.
Ex-kid actors Raquel Lee Bolleau and Alexa Nikolas, who were also the subjects on "Quiet on Set", revealed to IndieWire that the show and its directors deceived them during interviews. Raquel, who starred on "The Amanda Show", and Alexa, who was on "Zoey 101", claimed that they were misrepresented.
The two stars also claimed that their sensitive statements were used to further the series' success by amplifying prurient content from Dan's tenure at the network. "After watching the show, I saw that it was not at all what I signed up for," said Raquel. "I also saw that I was surrounded by people who have one agenda, and that one agenda is their own success. It's a horrible word to even use in this context: success."
As for Alexa, she shared that she was "livid" to see how the series used a sexualized clip of her on "Zoey 101" without sufficient context. The said clip saw Nikolas accidentally squirting neon green goo onto the face of Jamie Lynn Spears' character Zoey, creating a "cum shot."
"They made me feel like my story was going to be heard, and it wasn't," Alexa divulged. "They were more interested in resurfacing that awful footage than listening to survivors' experiences."
Alexa then slammed the documentary's director, Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz. "[They] feel like they have a license to it and that they're able to do whatever they want with it," she ranted. "That's how Dan felt, too . . . what is different from them to Dan Schneider? I don't see a difference. I only see a crossover."
Raquel, meanwhile, called the five-part documentary "retraumatizing" because she learned about Drake Bell's only after watching the series. "I knew I couldn't trust them the moment I watched those four episodes. In my interview with Emma, I speak so much about how close Drake and I were - so much so that it really would've painted an understanding of why I'm so hurt right now," she said.
"To know that you're about to reveal something like this, and you don't even care to nurture the real conversation, even to support who he was then and who he turned into, how dare you?" she further noted. "You had two years. You had two years to shape. You had two years to nurture. You had two years to develop. You had two years to bring together. You had two years to build. You had two years to get your stuff in order. There's no way that this should be falling apart the way that it is."
Raquel also claimed that the production team "pieced together a story and a narrative that they had on their own." She continued, "The reason they kept us all apart and from knowing specifics was because they knew if we all got together, we would start sharing and exchanging experiences and figuring out what this really is and what it means for us."
Challenging the show to air her entire interview, Raquel said that she once stopped Emma in the middle of the interview. "I said to her, 'Hey Emma, what is this about? Is this about Dan? Is this about Nickelodeon? Or is this about 'The Amanda Show'? You need to help me understand because your questions that you're asking me right now are not lining up with what we've been talking about over the past year,' " she recalled.
