'Quiet on Set: Breaking the Silence': Inside the Biggest Bombshells

The fifth episode of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV brought former child actors from some of Nickelodeon’s hit shows from the early 2000s back onscreen to discuss the troubling revelations in the series' first four episodes.

In the April 7 episode, titled "Breaking the Silence," journalist Soledad O’Brien interviewed Drake & Josh star Drake Bell, All That alums Bryan Hearne and Giovonnie Samuels, and other special guests about the series and their experiences at Nickelodeon.

According to the network, Quiet on Set, which debuted on March 17, was viewed by more than 16 million people. It featured plenty of bombshells, including an interview with Bell, now 37, who spoke out about being sexually assaulted by Nickelodeon dialogue coach Brian Peck when he was 15. The show also delved into the sexism accusations against producer Dan Schneider made by female writers on The Amanda Show.

Hearne and Samuels were also featured in the show and described their experiences working as some of Nickelodeon's few young Black actors in the early 2000s.

From All That alum Shane Lyons alleging Peck made "passes" at him while he was a child actor at Nickelodeon to Samuels and Hearne saying that they found Schneider's apology video unconvincing, here are the six most shocking revelations from the fifth episode of the docuseries.

All five episodes of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV are now streaming on Max.

Drake Bell says nobody has personally apologized about Brian Peck support letters

At the start of the episode, Bell addresses the public comments by Boy Meets World actors Will Friedle and Rider Strong regarding the letters of support they wrote for disgraced former dialogue coach Brian Peck when he was set to be sentenced in 2004 for sexually abusing Bell when he was 15. (Peck pleaded no contest to a charge of oral copulation with a minor under 16 and performing a lewd act with a 14- or 15-year-old in connection with the case. Bell's identity as the victim was not made public at the time since he was a minor. Peck was then sentenced to 16 months in prison and was mandated to register as a sex offender.)

The letters of support from Friedle, Strong, and other actors were publicly revealed for the first time in an earlier episode of the docuseries. Peck was a longtime friend of the actors; the actors spoke about their regret over the letters in a February episode of their podcast Pod Meets World, prior to docuseries’ release on March 17.

But for Bell, the remorse of the actors doesn't change how he remembers that day in court.

“I worked with Will [Friedle] on Spider-Man [the Disney XD series] and it was a lot of opportunity to apologize or talk about it, and [he] never did, but also it’s a very difficult subject to bring up,” Bell tells journalist Soledad O’Brien through video chat. “Especially in a work environment.”

Bell adds, “And that’s the thing that’s hard about this, is because everybody deals with their trauma in different ways, everybody comes to different conclusions at different times in their lives and realizations. I mean, I really appreciate their perspective now but that day is so ingrained in my mind and there’s so many people who ... nobody’s reached out to me. Not one person who has written those letters has reached out to me.”

Friedle, who played Eric on Boy Meets World, said in the podcast episode that that Peck had “ingratiated himself” in his life and that he had turned them “against the victim” by misrepresenting the charges. Friedle also said that looking back, he now believes that he was sitting in the courtroom “on the wrong side of everything.” 

Strong, who starred as Shawn Hunter, expressed similar regret. He said Peck “didn’t say nothing had happened" but rather suggested he was "a victim of jailbait." 

“Back then, you couldn't Google to find out what people were being charged with," Strong said, before speculating that “he was making a plea deal and admitting one thing — which is all he admitted to us — but it looks like he was being charged with a series of crimes, which we did not know.”

Friedle later added, “We weren't told the whole story, but it doesn't change the fact that we did it. I still can't get the words out to describe all of the things that I'm feeling inside of myself."

In a post shared to X (formerly Twitter) on April 5, Bell expressed forgiveness toward Strong.

“I just had the most amazing conversation with @RiderStrong we are all healing together. I have nothing but love and forgiveness for him,” the post read.

Bell defends his mother, says Peck "pulled the wool over everyone's eyes"

In episode three of the docuseries, when Bell for the first time publicly reveals the sexual abuse he endured at the hands of Peck, he talks about how Peck stepped into his life in a prominent role after causing a rift between Bell and his father, Joe Bell. (Joe had raised suspicions about Peck’s behavior around Bell and asked Bell's mother to never leave their son alone with Peck.)

Peck would later accompany Bell to acting auditions in Los Angeles, which were at least an hour away from where Bell lived with his mother, Robin Dodson. Due to the distance, Bell would frequently spend the night at Peck's house. One night when he was 15, Bell said he woke up to Peck sexually assaulting him.

Later in the docuseries, Bell says he and his father had rebuilt their relationship and were now on good terms. But viewers were unaware of where his relationship currently stood with his mother.

Since the docuseries’ release, Bell says people have been critical of his mother and accused her of not protecting her son. But he defended her in "Breaking the Silence."

“My mom and I have an incredible relationship,” he tells O’Brien. “I do feel there’s a lot of people kind of, after the doc, going after my mom a bit. But if you were in that situation at that time, he was so good at what he was doing, Brian, he was so calculated, he knew exactly what to say, how to say it, what to do, the image to portray, everything. I completely understand how he just pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. It’s tragic.”

'All That' alums Giovonnie Samuels and Bryan Hearne Say Dan Schneider’s apology was insincere

In this fifth episode, All That alums Samuels and Hearne make a reappearance. The former child actors spoke candidly in the earlier episodes about their experiences working with creator Dan Schneider as the only two Black actors on the Nickelodeon series during their tenure in the early 2000s. 

Since the docuseries’ release, Schneider, who left the network in 2018 after an internal investigation into his allegedly verbally abusive and demanding behavior on set, defended himself and apologized for his actions in a 20-minute YouTube video released on March 19.

However, Samuels and Hearne, who were visibly laughing, as O’Brien pointed out, after a clip of the video played, found the apology unconvincing. 

“The thing about his apology as a whole, is, I thought it was funny,” Hearne tells O’Brien, who asks, “What did you think was funny about it?”

Hearne responds, “If I could be candid, Dan was an actor before all of this. And so, I think that he brushed off some chops, and gave us a nice performance. Where was all of this apologizing when Jennette McCurdy’s [an iCarly alum] book came out?”

“Or when Angelique Bates [an All That alum] had said something,” Samuels chimes in. “Yeah, very publicly,” Hearne says, questioning why Schneider would apologize “without accountability.”

Hearne has spoken openly about his time on the sketch comedy show, where he was allegedly “referred to as a ‘piece of charcoal’ [by an adult],” he recently told PEOPLE. Hearne also recounted what he remembers to be a demeaning stunt where he was covered in peanut butter for dogs to lick off when he was 13-year-old on Nickelodeon’s On-Air Dare.

Samuels, who is also featured in the docuseries, told PEOPLE in March that while working on All That as a teenager, she was the sole Black actress not given a hairstylist and was being trained to avoid choking during a sketch that required drinking enormous amounts of fake coffee and sugar. She said it felt like “waterboarding.”

“When you have a writer or showrunner and he’s laughing the hardest, you go along with it,” Samuels says in the fifth episode. “Because one, you don’t know any better, and two, this is your job, this is your boss.”

In the video, Schneider addressed the allegations that he would treat Black child actors differently than others on set.

"Diversity has always been very important to my shows," Schneider explained to BooG!e, who played T-Bo on iCarly. "If you go back to the very first show, I haven't made that very evident as it is in the second one, and in the very first movie I made after that. I'm very proud of that."

But Schneider's words didn’t sit well with Samuels and Hearne.

"It was very evident from the first day that it was just the two of us,” Samuels says, referring to the fact that she and Hearne were the only two Black child actors on the show at the time. “That’s usually the first thing you do in a Black space or as a Black person or a person of color, you count who’s in the room in front and behind the camera. And there were two.”

Samuels says Schneider asked for "quote of support" before release of 'Quiet on Set'

Samuels also reveals in the fifth episode that Schneider called her a week before the docuseries aired, asking for “a quote of support” but she declined.

“He asked because I came back [to work with Schneider at the network] to do Henry Danger, which was some time later,” Samuels shares, adding that Schneider also knew she was featured in Quiet on Set. “He’s like, ‘You had a good time on set, right? Right?’” 

Asked how she responded, Samuels says, “I told him I was terrified of him. I said ‘You have the power to make people stars. And I was intimidated by you. I wanted to do a good job.’”

In a previous statement to PEOPLE, a spokesperson for Schneider said, “Nothing has been alleged about Dan other than him being a tough boss who got into disagreements with other adult executives at Nickelodeon and when Dan departed Nickelodeon a full investigation was done and again, that’s all that they found.”

Bryan Hearne's mom says 'Quiet on Set' helped repair relationship with son 

As shown in the docuseries, Hearne recalls when he was not asked to return as a cast member on All That after two seasons, a moment he says had an impact on the relationship with his mother, Tracey Brown.

“The day that we were told…in that moment, he grew up, and his body language showed it,” Brown said in an earlier episode. “[It] just showed this man protruding out, and that’s a man that didn’t trust his mom anymore. It ruined us.”

In this fifth episode, Brown is sitting next to her son and thinks back to that time when she believed she was protecting her son by openly expressing misgivings about the behavior she witnessed at the network.

“I wasn’t looking for my son to be this great star, and that’s my dependency,” she tells O’Brien. “My dependency is raising a healthy child.” She also says she “knew” she was responsible for the fact that her son lost his job on the show.

“It was like, well, whose fault is it? Is it my fault? You know, she’s the outspoken one,” Hearne adds, referring to his mother. “And there were times where I was like I’m not going to say anything because I don’t want her to burn the place down.”

Brown says her relationship with her son was strained from that moment forward, but filming this docuseries brought them back together. (They were interviewed separately in the earlier episodes.)

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Asked what advice they would give to a young Black actor today, Brown says, “Do it. But if you have to walk away, do that.”

'All That' alum Shane Lyons claims Brian Peck made ‘passes’ at him while working at Nickelodeon

In this fifth episode, All That alum Shane Lyons speaks out for the first time about his experience on the sketch-comedy show, recalling an inappropriate conversation he had with Brian Peck.

“There were certainly some passes,” Lyons says, referring to Peck. “When he asked me what I thought ‘blue balls’ was, I thought they were racket balls.”

"Some conversation was happening in the green room, and we get called to set, and Brian follows behind me,” Lyons recalls. “I’m kind of alone in the green room set, and he sits next to me and goes, 'Well we know what blue balls are right, Shane?’ Because previously in the conversation they were talking about ‘blue balls.’ I said, ‘Yeah, like racket balls.”

“I’m a kid, 13 [or] 14,” Lyons continues. “As I think back now, as an adult, as a 36-year-old, ‘Would I ever have a conversation with a 13-year-old boy like he had with me?’ No. It makes absolutely zero sense.”

Lyons also praised Bell for speaking out publicly about the sexual abuse he endured at the hands of Peck. 

“I think it was very brave of him to go on national television and say [it], and the specificity of what Brian did, was something nobody knew. And it's absolutely gut-wrenching,” he says, adding that he feels “very lucky and blessed that nothing like that happened to him.”

All five episodes of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV are currently streaming on Max.

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