Nickelodeon Nightmare: Dan Schneider accused of 'sexualizing' child stars and assaulting writers

For two decades, Nickelodeon hitmaker Dan Schneider has been at the center of allegations of workplace hostility, #MeToo controversies, and now, allegations that his shows targeting tweens overly sexualized its stars, including Amanda Bynes, Ariana Grande, and Jamie Lynn Spears.

"Sam and Cat" actress Jeannette McCurdy, who starred alongside Grande in the spin-off series "iCarly", alleged in her memoir "I'm Glad My Mom Died" that a "creator from Nickelodeon (believed to be Schneider) frequently provided children with alcohol and requested massages on set. McCurdy alleged that she was offered $300,000 in "silent money" for not speaking out about the abuse; she refused payment. The claims mirror those that have followed Schneider for years, and the showrunner was fired by Nickelodeon in 2018 following an investigation that found he had verbally abused co-workers.

In a recent report, dozens of former Nickelodeon employees, ranging from writers to child stars, have come forward to take on Schneider's tainted legacy. Schneider first joined the network as a writer on the sketch comedy series "All That," where Bynes and Kenan Thompson got their start respectively. Schneider's first series was "The Amanda Show" with Bynes; the actress then sought to live with Schneider and his wife Lisa Lillien in 2002 at the age of 16 in an attempt to emancipate herself from her parents.

Schneider became the "Norman Lear of children's television" with his shows turning Nickelodeon into a multi-billion dollar network. Yet Schneider reportedly refused to hire female writers for his shows, despite the cast and target audience being teenage girls. "All That" writer Kayla Alpert told Insider that Schneider said women can never be funny: "It's about something very dark and very wrong," she added.

Former 'All That' screenwriter Liz Feldman, who joined the show as a teenager, tweeted, "I worked for Schneider 25 years ago. I can confirm that inappropriate behavior was happening already then. #Me too." She then became the showrunner of Netflix's "Dead to Me."

Jenny Kilgen, one of the two writers of 'The Amanda Show,' has accused production company Storybook Productions of gender discrimination and perpetuating a hostile work environment, citing Schneider's repeated requests for massages (Schneider n was not named in the formal lawsuit, filed in 2000). The series' second writer wrote a letter claiming Schneider asked her and Kilgen to perform embarrassing acts for money, including faking 'being sodomized' while telling a story about her years of high school. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

And Schneider's alleged behavior didn't just happen behind the scenes: the multiple allegations against his toxic workplace led to on-set guidelines that encouraged young women to be too sexual for the sake of the "comic".

Alexa Nikolas, who starred opposite Jamie Lynn Spears in 'Zoey 101,' claimed Schneider encouraged a "goo" scene to mirror a pornographic "money shot."

"I think Jamie was 13, and they were squirting stuff on his face to make him look a certain way," Nikolas said.

"Victorious" actress Daniella Monet added that her outfits were "not age appropriate" and that she wouldn't wear some of those outfits even as an adult these days. "Do I wish certain things, like, didn't have to be so sexualized?" said Monet. "Yeah. One hundred percent."

Schneider also created the web series "The Slap" for exclusive character videos related to "Victorious" in 2010. Grande helmed the solo spin-off "Sam and Cat," spinoff of "Zoey 101." A category for web videos was for "Cat's Random Thoughts" showing Grande's character self-recording a series of mini-episodes from her bedroom. Schneider wrote and directed all eight installments. Grande, then 16, was shown sucking her own toe, trying to "milk" a potato, and pouring water on a bed, saying, "I'm soaked."

Some of the sexualized content went viral in 2019, racking up over 11 million views.

Russell Hicks, former president of content and production at Nickelodeon...