Mayim Bialik Claims ‘Quiet On Set’ Doc Reflected “Entire Culture” Outside Of Nickelodeon: “It Touched Me Personally”

The Quiet on Set doc has stirred up a lot of complicated feelings for several former child stars inside and outside of Nickelodeon.

During a recent episode of her podcast Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, host Mayim Bialik and fellow former child actors Jenna von Oÿ and Christy Carlson Romano reflected on the shocking documentary from Investigation Discovery, which raised several toxic workplace allegations and revealed that a number of registered sex offenders worked at Nickelodeon in the late ’90s and 2000s.

Though Bialik has previously said she had an overall positive time working as a teenager on the NBC sitcom Blossom, she confessed that the Quiet on Set documentary reflected “things that I heard about other sets during our time.”

“Women being berated in the writers 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,” Bialik said on the podcast. “I will say I do not believe that happened in our writers room … and there were things that we all thought were OK to even joke about, which now we’d be mortified.”

Dan Schneider, the creator and writer behind several popular Nickelodeon series at the time, was accused of verbally abusing and harassing several former employees. They also claimed that he regularly requested massages and was known for writing material that some considered inappropriate for children.

The documentary also explored the sexism and racism that was rampant at the network, as revealed by a number of former Nickelodeon employees and former child actors.

“You’re watching what the entire culture was like,” Bialik said. “This is not what what happened because ‘Nickelodeon this-that.’ Of course, it touched me personally. Of course it did.”

She added that the doc also revealed just how much they’ve progressed since then. “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 don’t get to push that child,'” she said.

Romano revealed during the discussion that she had also been approached by Investigation Discovery to participate in a documentary about child actors, though she did not clarify if it was Quiet on Set. She claimed she did not watch the documentary because she found it to be “extremely triggering.”

“These are people who don’t belong to our community,” she said of the filmmakers. “These are outsiders. And maybe they, maybe if they knew where to put money towards [fixing] a problem, they would, but again, a lot of this has been perceived in a way that’s — it’s outside baseball. It’s not inside baseball, it’s outside baseball. These are trauma tourists.”

She later said that the rights of child actors should be taken more seriously in the industry.

 “I do truly feel, and this may incite a little bit of backlash, but I do think they’re being under-serviced as union workers, personally,” she said.