Mayim Bialik responded to ID’s “Quiet on Set” docuseries in a new episode of her “The Breakdown” podcast alongside former child actors Jenna von Oy and Christy Carlson Romano.
One of Bialik’s observations revolved around the various experiences of women in writers’ rooms under Dan Schneider, which she pointed out was not exclusive to Nickelodeon.
“Women being berated in the writer’s room is something that was just like — I’m sorry — it was considered in — I mean, I hate to say it, — it’s considered par for the course,” she said to von Oy over 15 minutes into the podcast. “I will say I do not believe that happened in our writer’s room, and there were things that we all thought were okay to even joke about which now we’d be mortified.”
This stemmed from von Oy pointing out how things happening at Nickelodeon didn’t sound so far off from “things that I heard about other sets during our time.”
“You’re watching what the entire culture was like. This is not what what happened because ‘Nickelodeon this-that.’ Of course, it touched me personally. Of course it did,” Bialik also said. “But what it also reminded me of is how far we had to come to get to a place where people like Christy get to advocate and we know what she means when she says, the mental health of children on set matters and there are things that we can do to make sure that there are no exceptions. ‘You can’t push that child.’”
Christy Carlson Romano has not seen the docuseries, but she knows the details and the people involved. She explained that the podcast felt like a comfortable space to speak out before moving on.
“Every child who managed to get in through that front door had to say yes to everything. young performers are our compliant children at the heart of it. They’re people pleasers. And I think that they’re the perfect landscape to be vulnerable, ”she said. “I think we’re all kind of living with a little bit of survivor’s guilt. That could have been any one of us, and we all kind of need to grieve together, I think at this point and sort of come together to try to figure out what now.”
Watch the full podcast below:
Leave a Reply