Ariana Grande said she is “reprocessing” her time as a Nickelodeon child star and said it’s been “devastating” to hear the stories of others who’ve come forward recently with stories of abuse and misconduct.
Grande touched on the subject in a new interview on the Podcrushed podcast (co-hosted by her recent “The Boy Is Mine” video co-star, Penn Badgley). While Grande’s comments certainly seemed to allude to the recent Investigation Discovery docuseries Quiet on Set, Grande did not mention the program by name, nor did she name or say anything specifically about Dan Schneider, the embattled creator of many Nick shows, including the two Grande was on, Victorious and Sam and Cat. (Schneider has filed a defamation lawsuit over the documentary.)
“A lot of people don’t have the support that they need to get through performing at that level at such a young age,” Grande said. “But also dealing with some of the things that the survivors who’ve come forward — there’s not a word for how devastating that is to hear about. I think the environment just needs to be made a lot safer all around. And like I said, I’m still, in real time, reprocessing my relationship to it.”
Grande said she believed improving, if not mandating, access to mental heath services for child actors would be a great way to improve these environments, as well as making sure parents are “allowed to be wherever they want to be.”
“Not only on kids sets, I think if anyone wants to do this, or music, or anything at the level of exposure that it means to be on TV or do music with a major label, or whatever — there should be in the contract something about therapy is mandatory twice a week, or thrice a week,” Grande said.
Grande did say that the “beautiful thing” that came out of her time on Nickelodeon was getting to work so closely with her friend and co-star Elizabeth Gillies. “We were young performers who just wanted to do this with our lives more than anything, and we got to, and that was so beautiful,” she said. “I think we had some very special memories, and we feel so privileged to have been able to create those roles and be a part of something that was so special for a lot of young kids.”
But she also later took a moment to reflect on and critique some of the material and jokes they were doing at that age. “Speaking specifically about our show, I think that was something that we were convinced was the cool thing about us, is that we pushed the envelope with our humor and the innuendos,” Grande said. “We were convinced as well that it was like the cool differentiation. And I don’t know. I think it just all happened so quickly, and now, looking back on some of the clips, I’m like, ‘That’s… Damn, really? Oh shit.’”
