Dan Schneider was not later called The Norman Lear of Children’s Television without good cause. The man was not only wildly successful - he was equally prolific. Between 1994 and 2018, Schneider would be involved in the production of thirteen shows, and often served as a writer, producer, director, and even actor, all in some capacity. That is no mean feat. Schneider worked at a furious pace. Love him, hate him, you have to admit - the man has one hell of a work ethic. He knows what the sigma grindset looks like. And, if I had video editing software, I’d make one of those ridiculous sigma male TikTok edits with phonk music or Gangsta’s Paradise with footage of Dan Schneider.
You’re all so lucky I don’t have the means to make such a video.
The point is, Dan Schneider produced a lot of television. We’ll touch on most all of them, some more briefly than others. But it’s important to note that, in 1996, Schneider would make his own production company, because that’s just something everyone with a modicum of success in Hollywood does, it seems. Even though this company did play a part in the production of All That and The Amanda Show, it wouldn’t be until 2004 that they worked on their first proprietary project, completely divorced from his friend’s porudction company, Tollin/Robbins Studio. Under his own production outfit, Dan Schneider would accrue a staff corps comprised of directors, writers, musicians, cinematographers, so on and so forth. Going forward, he would keep these most individuals under his employ and, effectively, maintain almost the exact same creative team from one project to the next. Much like Schneider’s casting methods, this is extremely unusual in the television business. When it comes to scripted sitcoms, a creator or show runner keeping the same cadre of writers, directors, musicians, so on and so forth while moving from project to project is basically unheard of. It’s even more unorthodox to so jealously retain even the lower level production crew such as grips, gaffers, costumers, and catering personnel.
However, Schneider’s unique way of doing things once again proved to be one of his greatest strengths. I believe that the reason Schneider’s string of sitcoms following The Amanda Show were as successful as they were is because he almost scientifically calculated a formula for success that was followed, to the letter, by everyone from the top to the bottom of the production staff pecking order. And, as I often say - you don’t. f*ck. With the forumla. He found a crew that he could count on to reliably provide the same results, again and again, and refined them into a well-oiled machine. The result is an almost consistent, industrialized mass production-style of sitcom filming that is impressive in it’s own right. It’s how he managed to make so much in a relatively brief amount of time. It’s also why all of these shows were successful - they all had a little bit of that Schneider’s Special Sauce, and each contributed from the same unique, proprietary touch of all the various production staff he kept on his payroll.
It’s also partially why I believe his empire would ultimately unravel. You don’t spend almost twenty years around the same people without getting a little… comfortable. And, well… you’re probably aware of the old truism about the relationship between familiarity and contempt.
2004 would be the beginning of what some have jokingly, and some have not so jokingly, called the Nickelodeon Sitcom Cinematic Universe. Much like the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe the name is riffing on, this collection of sitcoms produced and created by Dan Schneider and his closely-managed stable of staff would all exist within the same fictional universe and share a sort of loose, overarching, and at time paradoxical and contradictory canon under which they would be united.
I imagine if Schneider’s name wasn’t radioactive today, people would be more inclined to call it, the Schneiderverse. However, it is, so I don’t want to call it that, nor do I want to call it the NSCU, because there’s already a content creator who’s pretty much got that term on lock-down. Not only do we share a penchant for long form content and verbosity, but we also bear a slight physical resemblence with one another, so I don’t want to come off as if I’m aping him too much.
Then, a name came to me; a name so stunningly obvious that I was amazed it wasn’t the first thing I thought of. Going forward, this interconnected universe of teen sitcoms produced by Schneider will be referred to as the Bakeryverse.
Why? Because in 2004, Drake and Josh would become the first independent production helmed by Schneider and the cabal of staff he’d collected under the now infamous name of…
Schneider’s Bakery.
Which, fun fact, was named after the business that Schneider’s father ran in Memphis. The more you know.
Anyways, despite Schneider’s unique method to his brand of madness, the Bakeryverse wasn’t really breaking any new ground in the world of sitcom television with this interconnected universe approach. Overarching continuity between sitcoms and their spin-offs is not out of the ordinary. Since there’s been sitcoms, producers have been taking stand-out actors or characters and giving them their own shows, often times with loose connections to the original program they came from.
In 1984, in episode one of the third season of the wildly successful sitcom, Cheers, audiences would be introduced to the character of Frasier Crane. Though Crane was originally intended to remain as a one-off antagonist for a story arc that spanned only three episodes, actor Kelsey Grammer’s performance would go over so well with the producers and audiences alike that the character quickly returned, and eventually became a series regular. When the series wrapped in 1993, a new series starring Grammer, reprising his role as Crane, would be greenlit under the simple title, Frasier. Out of all the sitcoms I’ve ever seen, I have to admit - I like Frasier a lot. I can’t say I’ve watched many network sitcoms, but out of all of them I’ve seen, there’s two that stick with me; one is M.A.S.H., and the other is Frasier.
And, for as much as I like Frasier himself… well, real ones know who the GOAT is.
But this isn’t a review of Frasier. Where I was going with this is that Frasier, despite taking place in Frasier’s hometown of Seattle, Washington, is pretty much a direct sequel to the Boston-based Cheers. Characters from Cheers routinely make guest appearances in Frasier. Hell, characters from Cheers, including Frasier himself, had a tendency of popping up in another early 90’s sitcom. Like Wings.
While Wings was not officially a spin-off of Cheers, it was produced by several alumni who worked on the latter, and, thusly, seems to be part of the larger continuity surrounding the place where everybody knows your name. The Cheersverse, if you will.
If you know anything about other big names in the sitcom space, you know that this is just one example of many. Petticoat Junction and Green Acres were a spin-off of The Beverly Hillbillies, which may be the first proper sitcom cinematic universe to ever be produced. All In The Family spawned not one, not two, not three, but seven spin-offs, all of which existed in the same continuation. M.A.S.H. had After M.A.S.H., which no one wanted or asked for. Happy Days gave us Joanie loves Chachi. And, of course, when it comes to legendarily bad spin-offs, Friends produced…
You don’t hear the Friends girlies talk about this one very much.
This is to say Schneider was not redefining the television landscape by setting all of his shows in the same universe. But I’d say that he perfected the art of doing so.
Unlike many of these other examples, the roster of shows produced by the Bakeryverse were all remarkably similar in a way that’s difficult to articulate. With one notable exception, they all possessed a remarkably consistent production. They looked similar to one another. They sounded similar to one another. The humor was very consistent across the board. It was demonstrably clear that the same production staff worked on each and every show, and that certain Schneider touch, as well as those of his subordinates, was tangible in each project. This isn’t to say that each series didn’t have their own unique flavors, quirks, and oddities, but when you watched one of Schneider’s shows, you could feel that it was part of the Bakeryverse from the production alone. In that way, the output of the Bakeryverse is, perhaps befittingly, like a line of baked goods. Cookies, if you will. A chocolate chip cookie from Schneider’s Bakery may taste different than a sugar cookie or an M&M cookie or a triple-chocolate fudge-dipped super-mega-ultra-awesome-death-by-chocolate cookie… but you can tell they were all crafted with meticulous care by the same gifted artisan.
So - what was the first sumptuous baked good to come from the depths of Schneider’s fine-tuned oven? 2004’s Drake and Josh.
Drake Bell had been on the cast of The Amanda Show from Episode 1. It wasn’t until Season 2 that Josh Peck was introduced. Bell admits that, at first, he wasn’t a fan of Peck. Mostly because, until his introduction, he had been the only teenage boy on a set full of teenage girls. The two, however, did establish a rapport with one another over their mutual love of old comedy movies and, even if they didn’t particularly care for one another, they certainly acted as if they were best friends. Not only were their comedic sensibilities, both physical and verbal, very complimentary of one another, but the two were able to put aside whatever differences they had and portray a very convincing pair of friends. In fact, one of the chief reasons Drake and Josh came to be was that, after the success of Kenan and Kel, Nickelodeon execs wanted Schneider to take another swing at the mismatched best friends buddy comedy concept that defined the series. During the filming of the final episode of The Amanda Show, while watching Drake and Josh fight over a shrimp - yes, really - writer Stephen Molaro, who, believe it or not, is one of the architects of Young Sheldon, leaned over to Schneider and told him, Those are your guys.
But, ah… well, let’s just say I don’t think Drake had much to worry about in terms of competition with the ladies on set. When The Amanda Show was airing, Josh Peck looked like this.
And I’m not trying to be mean. Josh Peck was overweight. And no one was going to let him forget it. Naturally, he was cast as the awkward, gawky, well-meaning but socially inept foil to Drake’s more fashionable, trendy, sociable girl-magnet. Because he was fat. And fat people can’t be cool or charming or anything other than goofy, silly, and generally buffoons. That would just be ridiculous.
And, to be fair, Peck did excel at playing the smart, sensitive, emotional, and dorky fat guy to Drake’s more socially adept, womanizing slacker. But Josh’s portrayal does seem a bit… mean spirited, in a way, how he’s consistently the punching bag and the butt of almost every joke in the first season. Which, apparently, Peck was not a fan of. Josh Peck had been raised by a single mother in New York City. He never met his father. His weight and his unconventional interest in old movies, theater, and stand-up comedy made him the target of harassment from his peers. In later years, he would admit the last thing he wanted to do was play the dramatized version of the fat, goofy idiot he’d always been told he was and never wanted to be.
But, Nickelodeon wanted a funny fat kid. And he wanted work.
Of course, midway through the show’s run, he grew up, went through puberty, and got his diet under control, so he looked like this:
So the usual haha laugh at the fat guy bit didn’t quite stick. It’s worth noting that his dramatic weight loss was not just for his own health and betterment, but a response to the justified fear that he would be type-cast for the remainder of his career as the funny fat guy who was the ass-end of every gag. I mean, if you ever want to see where that kind of type-casting leads, look no further than this guy.
I’m telling you, we weren’t just robbed by John Candy’s untimely death, but also the fact that Hollywood was terrified of casting him as anything but an obese goofball.
In Drake and Josh, the duo played an Odd Couple-esque pair of newly minted step-brothers in the San Diego area, who have to learn to get along after their parents marry and move in together. It’s worth noting that the woman who played their mother, Nancy Sullivan, was another Amanda Show alum, while the cast was rounded out by Drake’s scheming, possibly sociopathic little sister, Megan, played by then eleven year old up-and-comer, Miranda Cosgrove.
Remember her. She’ll be important later.
At the time, I wasn’t a fan of sitcoms, or much live-action television period. I was around Cosgrove’s age at the time, and, unlike her, who was getting that bag and making a career for herself, I made the mistake of playing video games and watching cartoons. My biggest concern at the time was trying to best the Battle Frontier in Pokemon Emerald. Silly me. You think I would learn from my mistakes and start investing in property during the sub-prime mortgage crash of 2008, but, unfortunately, I made the mistake of being in eighth grade at the time. Some people just never learn.
Anyways, I preferred animated shows to live-action sitcoms, even those made for my demographic.
But I did like Drake and Josh. Pretty much everyone in my generation did. The show had a bit of a lukewarm launch, but rapidly became one of Nickelodeon’s best performers. Consistently, Drake and Josh was drawing in millions of viewers, and was routinely one of the most watched programs not just on Nickelodeon, but the entirety of network television. This show was wildly popular with children and teens, in large part due to the content carefully straddling a line that appealed to both. While children could appreciate the wacky hijinks the mismatched step-brothers engaged in, older audiences could just as easily appreciate the clever wordplay and snappy dialogue. Hell, revisiting this series, I found there was a lot I remembered about it. There are lines I still reference to this day, as do many others who grew up with the show.
I still say, I’m not calling you a truther when people ask if I think they’re being dishonest.
Whenever I hear anything about Oprah, the first thing that comes to mind is Josh hitting her with his car.
When someone tells me to have a good day, my first reaction is still to say, Don’t tell me what to do.
And when something is round, I can hear Josh Peck’s voice in my head screaming, SPHERICAL!
Whether or not these scenes tickle you as much as they still tickle me is a matter of personal taste. I’m sure a lot of my enjoyment and fondness for them is a matter of nostalgia, in a lot of ways. But I do think that they’re genuinely funny. I also think that the fact I still remember this much of Drake and Josh and still f*cking think SPHERICAL whenever I hold something that’s round speaks to the outsized influence these programs have on their audience. I always say that it’s important that children’s entertainment be good, because even if it doesn’t play some small part in making them the people they become - which I’d say they do - it will certainly influence them in one form or another. Children are like liquids, in that way; they conform to the shape of what’s around them. And it’s imperative that what’s around them is good and not, uh…
What I’m trying to say is that if you give your child access to YouTube at this point, you might as well just have them lobotomized.
And, for the most part, I think Drake and Josh, when it comes to the content presented in it, is harmless. I really do not remember anything overtly strange or untowards or questionable in it. Sure, Drake is a womanizer, and there’s a few jokes that are clearly innuendo thrown in here and there, but none of it was so oblique as to register with an eight year old.
But this will not be the case for future output from the Bakeryverse.
Over the course of its production, the series spawned scads of merchandise, video games, spin-off books, and even two made-for-television movies that would all help firmly entrench the show as one of, if not the most popular and influential piece of children’s media from the time.
Drake and Josh continued for a total of four seasons and fifty-six episodes, though, due to being syndicated long after it’s conclusion, it certainly felt as if it went on for much longer. The show ultimately wrapped production in 2007, when Schneider, Bell, Peck, and other producers all came to the mutual agreement that the series had run its course.
Drake and Josh was not the only show that Schneider was overseeing at the time, either.
During the run of Drake and Josh, Schneider would continue to act as the showrunner for the revival of All That. In 2002, Nickelodeon execs came to him with an audition tape from a certain eleven year old girl and asked, politely but firmly, if he had a spot for her on the show, with what I’m sure was the unspoken, tacit implication - if you don’t, make one. Because this audition tape was not submitted by some random eleven year old acting hopeful from Hannibal, Missouri or Bemidji, Minnesota. No - this special little girl’s sister was, at the moment, arguably the biggest f*cking pop star on the planet.
In 2002, for the eighth season of All That, tabloids began to report that Britney Spears’ younger sister, Jamie Lynne, had joined the cast. And, yeah - that was a pretty big f*cking deal for the network. Spears’ inclusion among the cast of All That was, I suspect, done less to give the girl a chance to live out the dream of starring in a child-friendly sketch comedy show that she’d been dreaming off all her (brief) life. I believe it was more or less done to just kind of… shove her some where, keep her on the backburner, and get her into Nickelodeon Studios so their staunch, bitter, mouse-eared enemies over at the House that Walt Built couldn’t get their grubby, gloved hands on her first.
Well, snag Britney Jr. they did, and, if she didn’t like being All That, she wouldn’t have to suffer there for long. Only a year later, Nickelodeon would once again tap Schneider for a meeting. This time, they asked if he had an idea for a spin-off show for Spears to headline. Again, I’m sure there was a heavy implication of, If you don’t, come up with one.
And, in a way, Schneider did. But not without a lot of help from the matriarch of the Spears family, Lynne.
According to Schneider, the show was custom-made for Spears, and her mother was involved in the show’s creation considerably. The end result debuted in 2005 under the title of Zoey 101, in which Spears played the lead role of Zoey Brookes; a character who is both an unremarkable every-girl that the average young teen girl could relate to and an untouchable, charismatic, charming ray of sunshine that everyone likes and no one can say no to, who’s spirited away from her hum-drum suburban life to attend classes at the fictional Pacific Coast Academy. It was kind of like Harry Potter, but for boring suburban kids that didn’t have the stomach for wearing bathrobes and LARPing as a wizard.
Much like Harry Potter, the show tapped into every child’s desire to be whisked away to a gorgeous and opulent private academy where they can live semi-independent lives alongside their peers with minimal responsibilities. Basically, it was exactly what you think college is like when you’re ten years old. And that’s effectively what Pacific Coast Academy was in the show; a college for kids. To really sell this effect, the show was filmed on campus at Malibu’s Pepperdine Univeristy.
Having been there myself, I can tell you, if you’ve never been there before - it is stunningly beautiful. I would never want to live in California, but, I’d be lying if I said that visiting Pepperdine didn’t make me think, Well, if I got to live here… I suppose I could make it work. I can definitely see how the show managed to charm audiences just through the setting alone.
While Zoey 101 was, at it’s core, a comedy, compared to Drake and Josh, there was a much greater emphasis on romance and interpersonal drama designed to appeal to a young female demographic that I was not a part of. Though there was a small contingent of zany, sufficiently wacky young men that rounded out the cast as Zoey’s friends and love interests, the show still starred a girl and heavily focused on said girl’s personal life. Since I was about as interested in girls circa 2005 as I was watching paint dry or grass grow, and girls were yucky and gross and weird, Zoey 101 was not a show I watched as a kid. I saw some of it by virtue of having two younger sisters who did watch it, but my exposure was tertiary at best, and when I did have to suffer through it, it was done reluctantly. There’s really only two things that I can recall about it from my childhood.
For one, I remember when I did visit Pepperdine’s campus, my girlfriend at the time insisted I play the theme song to Zoey 101 while we drove around. For as little as I watched the show, I was astounded to find that, apparently, I remembered every word to the theme song. Weird how that works.
For another, I didn’t get the appeal of Jamie Lynne Spears. I didn’t get the appeal of her sister at the time, either, but I’ve found a sort of ironically-tinged, nostalgic appreciation for some her better songs, like so much of the early 2000’s pop scene. Or maybe pop music today is so f*cking wretched and debased that Spears’ musical output seems like Vivaldi or Liszt in comparison to Olivia Rodrigo. And if you think that’s absurd - compare and contrast.
But I digress.
I didn’t understand why Jamie-Lynne/Zoey was portrayed as the heart-throb of every red-blooded male on PCA’s campus when the token weird nerd girl character, Quinn, was right there and ten times better looking. Like I said, around the time Zoey 101 was airing, I was convinced that girls were some sort of invasive, parasitic species of humanoid doppelgangers that purely existed to make life for the male half of the population more complicated and problematic1, but when it came to actress Erin Sanders, who played Quinn… I was intrigued. For as obnoxious, annoying, generally weird and socially retarded they tried to make Quinn look by giving her all sorts of gross habits and strange quirks… well, what can I say.
I have a type. I always have. Even when I was young enough to think I didn’t.
Can you guess what it is?2
But the thing was, Quinn wasn’t Zoey. Erin Sanders wasn’t Jamie Lynne Spears. The show wasn’t called Quinn 101. The show was not just wish fulfillment for every girl who watched it - it was wish fulfillment for Jamie Lynne Spears.
Pretty much every other character was made to look bad so Zoey looked better by proxy. Every boy wants to date her. Every girl wants to be her. The way that Spears is portrayed in the show is so ridiculously, overwhelmingly positive that it borders on masturbatory self-indulgence. She’s borderline a messianic figure on campus. And I don’t think Spears is at fault for that. Nickelodeon was cashing in on the cultural clout of her last name and, as we’ll see, they had a very vested interest in building her up as a pop star in her own right, as they would with many of their future actors and actresses.
But the end result of this fawning devotion to Spears was that the rest of the cast were rendered second class citizens. It was Jamie’s little world; everyone else was just acting in it.
This brings us to one Alexa Nikolas.
Nikolas was tapped to play the character of Nicole Bristow, who was Zoey Brookes’ roommate and, ostensibly, best friend.
From the word go, the two actresses did not get along. Nikolas alleges that Spears was treated like a princess, and everyone else was made to accommodate her, often at their own expense. And if you didn’t? It wasn’t going to end well for you. You either bowed down to the Princess of PCA, or she’d make you kneel. She claims that she was bullied by Spears on an almost daily basis. Spears, for her part, corroborates that they did not get along, and has admitted since that she may have misbehaved once or twice, but has heavily alluded to the fact that she feels as if Nikolas was bullying her. According to Nikolas, Spears was under the impression that her co-star was jealous of her, her family name, and the lofty position it all afforded her, and treated her unkindly in turn. She claims that Nikolas was spreading rumors about her on set, telling others that she smelled bad which, Spears says, made her feel humiliated and sad. A real wordsmith, this woman is.
It’s also kind of funny. Bitch has a whole show devoted to her, an entire staff waiting on her hand and foot, and she rocks up to the set radiating that eye-watering, unwashed hobo stank like a professional Smash Bros. player.
She also claims that Nikolas regularly called her mean and bitchy behind her back, which, I mean… when you see where this goes, she’s not beating those allegations.
Who was bullying who? Who’s telling the truth? I’m inclined to believe it was something of both, but that’s just my own speculation. I’ve seen enough similar cases of girl-on-girl hyper-violence in my own personal life between feuding females to assume that both of them were most likely antagonizing each other, to some degree. But I’m also partial to suspecting that God-Queen Spears probably cast the first stone.
My favorite part of this little war is that another co-star named Christopher Massey, who played the token funny black guy, said the following in an interview with TMZ:
I don’t know what that is. Bullying was not a thing and I think with people right now and the bullying stuff going on… it’s a touchy subject to just throw that word out there on people, but [there was] definitely no bullying going on on set.
Do you think he was just dense and didn’t realize this blood feud between two thirteen year old girls was going on right in front of him, or the man was just like, Dude, f*ck this, I ain’t even touchin’ it. The fact he was in talks to return for a Zoey 101 reunion sequel probably helped him hold his tongue, too.
So - there are many conflicting stories, but very little tangible evidence. It’s basically the Roshamon of children’s television. What we do know is how this legendary beef between these two young actresses came to a head. And what happened was most certainly not Nikolas’ fault, and she was most definitely the aggrieved party.
As the second season of Zoey 101 was filmed, Nikolas’s mother became an increasingly frequent presence on set. After being told of her daughter’s mistreatment by Spears, and questionable behavior from the costuming staff, who was reportedly putting Nikolas in skirts that were just a little too short for her comfort (and, if Nikolas is to be believed, hand-picked by Schneider himself), her mother took it upon herself to monitor the goings-on around set. One day, Nikolas was pulled away from her mother by a talent coordinator - what that role entails, exactly, I’m unsure - who claimed that she was needed in the hair and make-up department. Instead, Nikolas was taken to Spears’ trailer.
Inside, she found that it wasn’t Jamie Lynne Spears waiting for her.
According to Nikolas, Britney laid the f*ck into her. Apparently, Britney called her an evil little girl, and told her to watch herself, or she’d be unemployable. I assume she probably said worse than that, too. Oh, and, it’s worth noting that Jamie Lynne was in the room while this was happening, too. Watching. Cowering in the back while her big sister verbally ripped this girl a new orifice.
Typical snitch behavior3.
This is not an allegation. This is not an unsubstantiated claim. This happened. Britney Spears herself has admitted this happened. She’s since apologized - publicly, and, apparently, privately as well.
Nikolas replied thusly:
Which is… pretty glowing praise, even if it is a bit overstated. But it makes sense when you hear how things continued to go down with Nikolas, Britney’s little sister, and Britney (Bitch) herself.
In 2022, Jamie Lynne Spears published a memoir titled, Things I Should Have Said. In this book - which I’m not buying to get the full quote from - Spears claims that she has no memory of bullying anyone. She goes so far as to reiterate the claim that Nikolas was antagonizing her.
Apparently, some of the things she should have said did not include an apology to Nikolas. Or very flattering things towards her older sister, who, apparently, she takes some thinly veiled swipes at.
But Britney? Oh. Britney was not having that. On Instagram, several days after the book was published, Britney Spears posted the following message:
Yeowch. I can see why Nikolas came down firmly in Camp Britney in this spat.
Apparently, after being read to filth by her sister, Jamie Lynne Spears did offer a private apology to Nikolas. And, apparently, it sucked. Nikolas stated in a podcast appearance that she believed that it was an insincere ploy to get her to join a potential Zoey 101 reunion that has been talked about for years, but never materialized. She had this to say on the topic.
“I’m guessing the pressure from others made her address the issue. I declined her offer. Why now? But I was happy to get an apology finally. So I forgave her. I have no idea what is going on over there with her but I want absolute nothing to do with it. Typical move for a bully to play the victim card/gaslight others while straight up lying. I responded to her and said ‘Please do not send me anything and please stop contacting me.”
f*cking brutal.
I also really like this comment I found on this dreadful celebrity gossip forum I had to slog through to do this research.
Well said, lemonbaby. Well said. Why did the erudite lemonbaby say this? Well… we’ll talk about Alexa Nikolas’s current whereabouts in a future installment. And, once we do… you’ll see.
Britney blamed the incident that she was pregnant, hormonal, and fiercely protective of her (at the time) beloved sister, but, like… still. Britney. C’mon.
Just imagine, for a moment, being in Nikolas’s shoes. You’re already cagey. You’re stressed, you’re anxious, you’re being antagonized on a daily basis by your co-worker, who’s basically royalty, and the atmosphere on set is decidedly tense and hostile. Then, you’re pulled away from your mom, dragged in front of the biggest f*cking name in music - a global pop star, a woman who’s face is on every magazine, constantly on television, someone you can’t even turn on the radio without hearing - and this twenty-three year old, grown ass woman verbally lambasts you and tells you that if you don’t stop being a bitch to her sister, you’ll be unemployable for the rest of your natural life.
And you’re barely thirteen.
When I said in the previous installment that Dan Schneider had a duty and responsibility to the children under his purview to keep them safe, this is exactly why I said he failed. This incident should have never happened under his watch. Nikolas should never have even been in a room alone with Britney Spears, and, if she did without his knowledge, his immediate response should have been something along the lines of, You do not talk to my cast that way, and probably, You are no longer welcome on set. I’m sure that would have had consequences for him - dire ones, perhaps - but it is, in my opinion, the only correct course of action he could have taken.
The antagonism between Spears and Nikolas should have never progressed as far as it did. He should have stepped in and quashed it the moment it started. On set, he was the final authority. He had an obligation, both professionally and ethically, to keep things like this from happening.
And he didn’t.
He didn’t just fail to keep Nikolas safe - he made it worse.
After being torn a new asshole by Spears, Nikolas immediately told her mother. Her mother, in turn, requested a meeting with the show’s production staff. Nikolas, her mother, her agent, and her lawyer all met with Schneider and the producers of Zoey 101. I’ll let Nikolas describe what happened in her own words.
“There were three other producers in there who were allowing him to act like that. [One casting director] was like, ‘You should be thanking us for giving you an opportunity like this. You’re lucky to be on Nickelodeon.'”
Nikolas, at one point, burst into tears. Understandably so. Schneider brought the meeting to a pause and requested to speak to Nikolas. Alone. A request that, for reasons beyond me, her mother and her agent acquiesced to. Once in private, she claims that Dan, in her words, screamed at her the following statement.
“This is not called Nicole 101, do you understand me?”
Nikolas fled the room and went back to her mother. Then and there, her mother demanded that her daughter be removed from the show. Before the day was up, Nikolas’s contract with Nickelodeon Studios would be terminated.
How much of this is true? It’s difficult to say. It could be hyperbole. Nikolas could be misremembering certain things. Maybe Schneider didn’t scream at her, per say. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was both extremely unprofessional and just outright immoral to take a f*cking child under your employ into a room, alone, and say anything even remotely close to what he said to Nikolas.
And, given the other well-attested stories that have come out about Schneider’s behavior on set, I see no reason to believe that he didn’t yell at Nikolas, or that she’s exaggerating anything about the incident. As we’ll see, Schneider was not afraid to raise his voice and get belligerent. Not at his staff. Not at children.
It was Schneider’s Bakery, damn it. And it wasn’t a democracy - it was a dictatorship.
But we’ll get more into the bad behavior of Dirty Dan… next time.
1
Ironically, I actually had plenty of friends that were girls around this time, and I always have, but I still had to pretend as if I hated them despite being a total pimp, because that’s what eleven year old boys do.
2
No prizes if you guess correctly.
3
Pull that sh*t on the streets, you punk bitch, see if you don’t catch this gat.
