Rarely has a documentary series generated such a commotion as the one caused by Silence on Set, which HBO Max premieres in Spain this Friday. An entire generation that grew up watching Nickelodeon children’s shows, particularly The Amanda Show and All That and More devoured each of the four episodes directed by Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, veterans of the journalistic series Frontline.
The response was so positive that a fifth episode was later added that summarizes the previous ones and includes a new interview with Drake Bell, undoubtedly the great figure, but not for the best reasons. Although the series focuses on Dan Schneider, who in the 1990s became the most powerful producer at Nickelodeon, a division of Viacom, a company to which Paramount and CBS also belong, it was Bell’s confession in front of the cameras that that turned this docuseries into must-see content for large American audiences.
Although Brian Peck, who worked on the set as a theater teacher and took advantage of the teenage actor when he was 15, was tried and convicted, since his victim was a minor, his name was never released, and until the third episode was broadcast episode, the actor, who is now 37, had never publicly told the story.
Robertson and Schwartz became interested in the topic when they saw several videos on the networks that rescued moments from the series created by Schneider that could be interpreted as allusions to pornography. This is how they began to investigate who also wrote those shows that were extremely popular, such as Zoey 101, co-starring Ariana Grande, in addition to those already mentioned. When they began to ask for interviews with those who worked on those shows both in front of and behind the cameras, they were surprised by the response, as if they had been waiting for the truth to be told one day. Thus they were putting together a portrait of this robust, jovial and full of ideas man, who became increasingly more temperamental as he acquired power.
And although they did not find anything that could convict him judicially, they managed to demonstrate that on those sets there was a toxic culture that put success before the well-being of the children and adolescents who made up the casts. Schneider did not want to appear on camera and limited himself to responding to the accusations with text messages, and neither did Melinda Crosgrove or Amanda Bynes, who after the enormous success she had in her adolescence dealt with mental health problems that led her to abandon her career. a decade ago.
Robertson and Schwartz not only investigated Peck’s case, but also that of Jason Handy, an assistant who worked on the set and who sent indecent photos of himself to an 11-year-old girl he met at an audition, for which he was sentenced. to six years behind bars. Logically, the series generated enormous controversy in American society in general and in the world of entertainment in particular.
