Last Updated on March 24, 2024
A reporter and stage mom named Melanie VanDerveer wrote an essay for The Blast entitled “My Interview With Dan Schneider: A Haunting Reflection 16 Years Later.” Disgraced Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider oversaw an operation where child predators preyed on Hollywood minors, according to Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TVĀ (streaming on Investigation Discovery). The documentary aired as a two-part event and itās now streaming, andĀ some of its major revelations are getting around in the news cycle.
“After watching the docuseries, I started to feel the ick about talking so highly of someone who was doing such terrible things, that obviously were unknown to the general public back then. So, I unearthed my story and read through it, and OMG! (That’s literally all I could muster up after reading the story),” VanDerveer wrote, telling the story of interviewing Schneider for the Eastern Pocono Community News in 2008.
“As I began to scan through the aged ink on the page, which were my own words, my heart sank after the first few sentences…,” VanderVeer wrote.
“The story starts out, “Kids are very impressionable, especially that ‘tween’ age so who they idolize should be a positive role model.” I had to take a second to process what I just read. The next line of the story is, “No one knows this better than Dan Schneider, the creator of many positive ‘tween’ shows on Nickelodeon.” It took a few minutes for me to be able to process that, knowing what I know now from watching “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,'” VanDerVeer wrote.
VanDerVeer’s essay is a pretty interesting take on the subject, considering that she became a stage mom herself for her TV actor son, and she would not allow her son to be alone on the set. Will journalists think twice now before writing perfunctory puff pieces on Hollywood wheeler-dealers?