It’s been a couple of months since the docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV brought allegations of abuse on the sets of Nickelodeon kids shows to light. Now one of the network’s biggest stars, Kel Mitchell (All That, Kenan & Kel) is opening up about his experiences with writer and showrunner Dan Schneider, who allegedly allowed a hostile work environment to develop for the shows’ stars. Some of the accusations against Schneider that were described on Quiet on Set include gender discrimination, overlooking people of color, and making inappropriate jokes.
On the podcast Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, Mitchell described situations where he felt Schneider abused him verbally as he took over All That. “[The producers] left us with the head writer, Dan Schneider,” he told Palmer, according to People. “So he’s writing, and me and him kind of bump heads a little bit. I remember me and Dan had a big argument on set. He was like, ‘Let’s go over here to this room right here, in this closet.’ He closed the door, and he just took off, you know, just yelling all this wild stuff.” Mitchell remembered being 18 or 19 years old around the time.
“Being an adult at this point … I was just like, ‘OK, either we [are] going to fight or either I’m going to leave,'” he recalled. “And so that’s what I did. I left the situation.”
In March, Schneider issued an apology for “rude” behavior on his shows. That same month, Mitchell’s acting foil on the shows, Kenan Thompson, said that he didn’t experience that sort of abuse but he wanted to see more action on the part of Nickelodeon. “I can’t really speak on things that I’ve never witnessed,” Thompson said on the Tamron Hall Show. “You know what I’m saying? Because all these things happened after I left, basically, and Dan [Schneider] wasn’t really on Kenan & Kel like that. I mean, he got a ‘created by’ credit, but it was a different showrunner. So our worlds weren’t really overlapping outside of all that, necessarily. And then all that negativity kind of started happening outside of our tenure there.”
Last month, Schneider filed a lawsuit against Quiet on Set’s creators, alleging defamation since he felt the series linked him to sexual predators who worked on Nickelodeon productions. “In their successful attempt to mislead viewers and increase ratings, they went beyond reporting the truth and falsely implied that I was involved in or facilitated horrific crimes for which actual child predators have been prosecuted and convicted,” he said in a statement. “I have no objection to anyone highlighting my failures as a boss, but it is wrong to mislead millions of people to the false conclusion that I was in any way involved in heinous acts like those committed by child predators. I owe it to myself, my family, and the many wonderful people involved in making these shows to set the record straight.”
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
