“What I Like About You” star Jennie Garth recently recalled working on the Amanda Bynes comedy series with co-creator Dan Schneider, and revealed that she made him so uncomfortable that she ultimately refused to speak to him and only communicated with co-creator Wil Calhoun.
“I’ve selectively forgotten his name at the moment. He was part of that big scandal,” Garth told Dax Sherpard on his podcast series “Armchair Expert” on Monday, sharing that she prefers not to mention Schneider’s name while noting that Calhoun created the series with “another guy.” The “scandal” she was referring to was the abuse and misconduct accusations documented at length in the “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” series.
“He was [on] the Amanda [Bynes] side of it,” Garth said. “She had worked with him a lot on ‘The Amanda Show’ and all the things. So he had hooked his wagon onto her.”
“Were you getting bad vibes?” Shepard asked, to which she said yes.
“To the point where I said to Wil, ‘I would rather just communicate solely with you. I trust you. I think that you have my best interests in mind, and I don’t feel that way with your partner,” Garth explained. “So I’d rather just be with you.’ And he was like, ‘No problem.’”
Watch the full interview below:
Investigation Discovery’s four-part documentary series “Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” took a look behind the scenes of Nickelodeon’s most prolific and controversial writer and producer Schneider. The docuseries chronicles how, during his years-long reign of alleged toxic workplace behavior, Schneider birthed what is known today as the network’s most successful eras, as well as the most horrific times for child actors and production crew members.
While Schneider was applauded for his sharp ability to grab children’s attentions through hilarious sketches that children and teens loved, behind the scenes he was known as an “abusive” boss who would take advantage of his cast and crew, according to “Quiet on Set.”
In the series, several former child stars and production staffers accused Schneider of pressuring wardrobe costumers to give him massages on set, underpaying and coercing female writers to perform sexual acts in the writers’ room and continually writing in coded sexual adult jokes into scenes for child actors.
After the documentary finished airing last spring, Schneider released a statement.
“Dan expected and asked a lot from his teams. They worked long hours and consistently made successful shows. In the challenges of production, Dan could get frustrated at times, and he understands why some employees found that intimidating and stressful,” a spokesperson for Schneider told TheWrap. “In a career spanning 30-plus years, Dan worked with thousands of people, many of whom still tell him how much they enjoyed and appreciated working on his shows.”
