By: Hunter Gilmore
In a new bombshell documentary titled “Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” actor Bryan Hearne joins a plethora of former child actors, including Giovonnie Samuels and Drake Bell, who have taken the industry by storm with their first hand accounts of racism, trauma, exploitation, and embarrassment. And despite producer Dan Schneider’s recent apology, many argue it’s too little too late.
Hearne candidly shared his distressing experiences as a child actor on the set of “All That.” While the comedy sketch series was marketed as a tween-friendly version of “Saturday Night Live,” Hearne faced racial slurs, tokenism, and degrading situations both behind the scenes and in front of the camera during his time on the show.
Now aged 35, Hearne was merely a young teenager when he joined the cast of “All That” for seasons 7 and 8, featuring in 16 episodes from 2000 to 2002, with his final appearance airing on February 22, 2003. Despite the laughter from the audience, Hearne was deeply troubled by certain skits, a feeling that’s lingered with him ever since. These disturbing revelations emerged with the premiere of “Quiet on the Set” on Investigation Discovery, where Hearne and other former child actors recounted their harrowing experiences on several of Nickelodeon’s popular TV shows from the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Many of these shows were either created or executive produced by Dan Schneider, who began his career in 1993 as a producer and writer for “All That” before moving on to produce “The Amanda Show,” “Drake & Josh,” “iCarly,” and “Zoey 101.” Schneider’s departure from the network in 2018 followed an internal investigation into his alleged verbal abuse and demanding conduct. In “Quiet on the Set,” Hearne exposed the racist environment he endured as one of the few Black child actors employed by Nickelodeon at the time. During the filming of “All That,”…
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