New allegations made against former Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider
Further allegations of misconduct have been made against the former Nickelodeon showrunner Dan Schneider. Following the whistleblowing documentary series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, All That cast member Lori Beth Denberg has joined the names sharing their alleged experiences with Schneider.
Denberg has come forward and accused Schneider of showing her porn, initiating phone sex and more when she was only a teenager. She starred in four seasons of All That between 1994 and 1998. At the time, Schneider was a head writer on the show, meaning that the two worked closely together.
In an interview with Business Insider, she detailed her experiences with Schneider and the situations he allegedly put her in as a young adult. According to the actor, around her 19th birthday, Schneider requested a meeting with her, only to spend it showing her pornography on his phone. She said the “grand finale” of the clips involved a woman performing oral sex on a donkey.
“I feel like that is the first time he preyed on me,” she said before detailing further experiences with the showrunner.
Accusations of Schneider showing young stars pornography were brought up during Quiet on Set. In one episode, Jenny Kilgen, a writer on The Amanda Show, claimed that he showed writers porn on his computer during work in order to see “how far can I push this person”.
Schneider has denied all of the claims made against him. In a statement to Business Insider, he called Denberg’s accusations “wildly exaggerated and, in most cases, false”.
Additionally, he recently filed a defamation lawsuit against the producers of the five-part show. As obtained by Variety, a part of that document reads, “Quiet on Set’s portrayal of Schneider is a hit job. While it is indisputable that two bona fide child sexual abusers worked on Nickelodeon shows, it is likewise indisputable that Schneider had no knowledge of their abuse, was not complicit in the abuse, condemned the abuse once it was discovered and, critically, was not a child sexual abuser himself.”
In a further statement to Variety, Schneider wrote, “Recently the docuseries Quiet on Set highlighted mistakes I made and poor judgment I exhibited during my time at Nickelodeon, most of which happened decades ago during my early career as a producer, working on shows for Tollin/Robbins Productions. There is no doubt that I was sometimes a bad leader.”
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