ID releases an explosive trailer for its "dark side of Nickelodeon" docuseries

It’s been six years since TV producer/former Head Of The Class star Dan Schneider picked up a Hollywood credit that wasn’t very careful to note that his participation in a project was in-name-only; once the incredibly successful star of Nickelodeon’s live-action TV development system, the iCarly creator hasn’t worked in any major sense since the network essentially cut ties with him in March of 2018. (Probably not coincidentally, just a few months after the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a serial predator ushered in new attitudes toward “open secrets” lurking in Hollywood’s closets.) The allegations against Schneider were never cut-and-dry—he’s never been sued for anything, unlike so many targets of #MeToo ire—and were often as much centered on accusations of petty abuses, boundary-crossing, and general unpleasant behavior as much as anything more overtly sinister. But there were enough people, expressing a wide enough variety of discomforts about the way Schneider ran the many, many shows he made for Nickelodeon—all of which starred children, obviously—that Nickelodeon clearly seems to have felt like it might be safer to kill its golden goose.

All of which serves as backdrop for the above trailer for Investigation Discovery’s new docuseries Quiet On Set, which dropped online this week. Talking to a number of performers, parents, and producers from the Schneider-era of shows, it’s clearly provocative stuff. (Including noting multiple men who worked at Nickelodeon during this period, who were eventually forced to register as sex offenders.) This era of Nick has produced a lot of very vocal critics, including Zoey 101 star Alexa Nikolas—who appears in the trailer—and iCarly star Jeanette McCurdy, who told multiple stories in her recent memoir about a man only referred to as “The Creator,” who used his power over her as the producer of her TV show in uncomfortable ways. (Per The New York Times, a 2018 internal investigation into Schneider’s conduct accused him of verbally abusing co-workers, but presented no evidence of sexual impropriety.) There is, in other words, a lot of darkness and anger to tap into surrounding this topic, and it looks like ID is very prepared to do said tapping, when the two-part docuseries arrives on March 17.