The goo, roughly the consistency of an egg white, was being squirted repeatedly on the teen actor Jamie Lynn Spears' face.
Spears was shooting an episode of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101" in which a costar accidentally sprays her with a yellowish-green liquid candy called a "goo pop."
But Dan Schneider, the show's meticulous creator, found problems with every take, Spears' costar Alexa Nikolas recalled, making a crew member squirt the syringe of goo at Spears over and over again.
Then, in one take, the slime
hit Spears squarely on her forehead, dripping down her face and mouth.
Schneider started laughing hysterically, Nikolas said. Others laughed as well, including Spears' mother, who was on set at the time. Nikolas said she heard one of her male teenage castmates say, "It's like a cum shot."
That was the shot that made it into the show.
"We're talking about a minor," Nikolas said. "I think Jamie was 13, and they're squirting stuff on her face to make it look a certain way."
(Russell Hicks, Nickelodeon's former president of content and production, said that a standards-and-practices group read every script for Schneider's shows, that programming executives watched every episode, and that parents and caregivers were always on set. "Every single thing that Dan ever did on any of his shows was carefully scrutinized and approved," Hicks wrote in a statement to Insider.)
(A person close to Schneider said that "the 'goo' was green, just like Nickelodeon's famous slime," adding: "This episode aired and was seen by millions of people and (to our knowledge) not one viewer ever had a concern.")
At the time, around 2004, Schneider was on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people at Nickelodeon. Schneider joined the network in 1993 as a writer on "
All That." His first series, "The Amanda Show," starring Amanda Bynes, established his brand of kid-friendly slapstick comedy. Subsequent hits like "Zoey 101," "iCarly," and "Victorious" helped turn Nickelodeon into a
$10 billion-plus powerhouse, leading The New York Times to
crown Schneider "the Norman Lear of children's television."
A heavyset
former child star with a round face and rumpled button-downs, Schneider was obsessively hands-on as the creator, executive producer, and writer on his shows, according to his cast and crew. He maintained a constant presence on the set, chatting with teenage casts for hours after filming ended. Winning Schneider over could be a career-making move; he was known to craft bigger roles and even new series for his favorites.
"He was what every kid star wanted," said Nikolas, who played Nicole Bristow on "Zoey 101." "They wanted to be on his show."
Despite Schneider's success,
whispers that he bullied crew members and became overly close with child actors have followed the 58-year-old for years. In 2018, Nickelodeon cut ties with Schneider after an investigation found he'd verbally abused colleagues. Nikolas, who has been outspoken about her negative experiences at Nickelodeon, told Insider that Schneider once yelled at her so harshly when she was 13 that she broke down in tears.
Writers, actors, and crew members told Insider they were disturbed by sexualized scenes in Schneider's scripts, such as the goo-pop shot or one in which a teenage Victoria Justice had food rubbed on her bare stomach. And in a gender-discrimination and hostile-workplace claim made in 2000 that has not previously been made public, a writer on "The Amanda Show" said Schneider had made her uncomfortable by persistently requesting massages, according to two people with knowledge of the case.
Some people who worked with Schneider requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions, but their identities are known to Insider.
Rumors of Schneider's misconduct exploded into
widespread speculation earlier in August when the "iCarly" star Jennette McCurdy published her memoir, "I'm Glad My Mom Died." In the book, McCurdy describes an "iCarly" "Creator" who
pressured her into drinking alcohol, gave her an unwanted massage, and pitted young actors against one another.
Many of the 15 former child actors who spoke with Insider maintain warm relationships with Schneider. "Dan cared about the kids on his shows even when sometimes their own families unfortunately did not," Hicks wrote. "He was the shoulder they cried on when something happened to them. He understood what they were going through."
But several writers and crew members said Schneider created an uncomfortable, bizarre environment that he ruled over like a fiefdom. Schneider was Nickelodeon's breadwinner, giving him immense power, and child actors and their families would do anything to win him over. One longtime writer said it took years before he understood what he now describes as the "maddening, disgusting, controlling little bubble" that Schneider created.
"It's why people stayed for so long and never said anything" publicly, the longtime writer said. "It was very effective."
For many Nickelodeon actors, life at the network was surreal, the "Amanda Show" actor Raquel Lee told Insider.
For every normal preteen activity, like Bynes making friendship bracelets for Lee, there was an only-in-Hollywood moment, such as Bynes' pop-star boyfriend Aaron Carter showing up on the set. Lee, who went on to act on the Disney Channel show "The Proud Family," recalls child stars scrambling to buy luxury cars before they were even old enough to have licenses, with Kyla Pratt once pulling up to the "Proud Family" set in a brand-new Lexus at 14.
In the early 2000s, one of the most coveted child-acting gigs was on a Schneider show — a goofy laugh-track-backed universe filled with gags like the spaghetti taco, an "iCarly" punchline so buzzy that it was
written up in The Times. Being cast by Schneider opened up a world of crossovers and spin-offs, with payouts that could change a family's life. Miranda Cosgrove, who
was said to have earned $180,000 an episode as Carly on "iCarly,"
bought a $2.65 million home at 19. In his memoir, Josh Peck
wrote that he made about $450,000 over five years of filming "Drake & Josh."
Backstage reported in 2012 that most child-star series regulars earned just $5,000 to $7,000 a week before taxes and expenses, which a parent of three child actors said could reduce weekly take-home pay to a mere $500.
Actors, and sometimes their parents, vied for Schneider's attention. Some parents were so desperate for Schneider to notice their children, Nikolas said, that they would "physically push" them toward him. Everyone took careful note of his favorite stars, with the "Zoey 101" star Matthew Underwood's mother counting the number of lines each actor had in every episode, Nikolas said.
It was an environment, Lee said, that brought out the worst in people.
"Out of desperation, people will do a lot of things," she said. Desperation, Lee added, is "how the industry feeds itself."
hose on set said Schneider relished being "with the cool kids," in the words of a former crew member, often palling around with his teenage stars.
Schneider took the young actors out to dinner, invited them to his house for holiday parties, and — to the annoyance of some in the writers room — delayed writing scripts for hours as he socialized with the stars on the set. The Nickelodeon powerhouse took
multiple photos with teenage actresses sitting on his lap, something Nikolas said was common on the set of "Zoey 101."
Schneider was so close to Bynes that
in 2002, when she was 16, People magazine
reported, she sought to live with him and his wife while attempting to emancipate herself. Schneider's wife, Lisa Lillien,
has said that though Bynes "was spending a lot of time with us," she never moved in.
Some of Schneider's colleagues questioned the amount of time he spent chatting and texting with young actors, though the person close to Schneider told Insider: "Dan always had a rule for himself when texting anyone under age 18. That rule was text like their parents and the whole world are reading, too."
While Schneider could be a mentor for some, others saw him as a bully. The actor Angelique Bates recalled Schneider screaming at her after an "All That" sketch went off the rails, to the point that she ran away, crying. Her mother corroborated the incident to Insider. The person close to Schneider said that Schneider "never screamed at anyone" but speculated that perhaps Bates "got upset" with "some direction Dan was giving her."
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