“Quiet on Set: Breaking the Silence” featured a new interview with “All That” cast members Giovannie Samuels and Bryan Hearne. The pair, who also participated in the first four episodes of the ID docuseries, returned to sit down with host Soledad O’Brien and talk about the series and Dan Schneider‘s post-documentary interview.
“The thing about his interview as a whole, I thought it was funny. If I could be candid, Dan was an actor before all of this,” said Hearne, who appeared on Seasons 7 and 8 of “All That.” “I think that he brushed off some chops and gave us a nice performance. Where was all of this apologizing when Jennette McCurdy’s book came out?”
He continued, “I just feel that, what’s an apology without accountability? Realistically, if you take the inappropriate jokes away, do you have a show anymore? If you take all the foot jokes, take all the face shots, all that inappropriateness [away], is it just commercials then?”
Schneider first released multiple statements, denying that he was “sexualizing” any of the young stars. The following day, he released a 20-minute interview on his YouTube channel, during which he apologized for his actions and said that “every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience, because kids thought they were funny.” However, he said that if certain jokes are now looked at by adults as inappropriate, he supports the decision to cut them in reruns.
Samuels, who starred on Seasons 7-9 of “All That,” stated during “Breaking the Silence” that even as a kid, many of those jokes were not funny — but she went along laughing because the adults in the room were, and she wanted to keep her job.
Samuels and Hearne were asked if they felt they were tokenized as the only two Black people on set of the show — in front of and behind the camera. “Yes,” Samuels responded. “It was very evident from the first day, it was just the two of us.”
She also shared that she had recently spoken to Schneider.
“I got a phone call. He reached out a week before the documentary aired. He asked if I could give a quote of support. He knew I was in the documentary for a year. He was like, ‘I love Gio, she’s great, she’s nice, she could tell my side.’ I don’t know what you want,” she said. “He asked — because I did come back to do ‘Henry Danger’ — he was like, ‘You had a good time on set, right? Right?’ I told him I was terrified of him… I said, ‘You had the power to make people stars, and I was intimidated by you. I wanted to do a good job.'”
Shane Lyons, who appeared in 23 episodes of “All That” in Seasons 7-9, also was part of the fifth episode as he decided to come forward after hearing everything that had happened behind the scenes.
“I think the only way we can change is to really evaluate the past and I have some perspective to share on that and felt like it was important,” he said about choosing to appear. Lyons had worked alongside Brian Peck — who later went to prison for sexually assaulting Drake Bell — on “All That,” and said that he was “enamored” by him since he was one of the adult cast members.
After calling Bell’s story “gut-wrenching,” Lyons added, “I feel very blessed and lucky that anything like that happened to me. There were certainly some passes.”
He then recounted a group of people talking about blue balls on set when he was around.
“Some conversation was happening in the green room and we get called to set and Brian follows behind me. I’m kind of low in the green room set and he sits next to me, and he goes —previously in the conversation they were talking about blue balls, and I just didn’t know what they were — and he goes, ‘Well, we know what blue balls are, right Shane?'” Lyons recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, like racquetballs.’ I’m a kid, 13, 14. 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… a 13-year-old girl, a 13-year-old anybody. They’re kids. Why are you talking like that?”
Lyons also spoke about how kids should be protected on set, starting with a law update, so that a convicted child molester cannot be on any set.
“Currently, there’s a loop hole in the law that as long as there’s a guardian or a parent omnipresent on the set, they don’t have to hire people who go through a background check,” he said, noting that Schneider pointing to the bosses above him that signed off on things “sounds like the farmer that blames the tractor for the poor harvest.”
A spokesperson for Nickelodeon, the network that parted ways with Schneider in 2018, released the following statement regarding the claims in the doc: “Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct. Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crew, but of all children, and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”
