Daniella Monet opened up about feeling “sexualized” when filming for Victorious and claims that Nickelodeon ignored her concerns.
According to a report from Insider, Monet, who plays Trina Vega in the show, said that Schneider was known to ramp up the series’ sexual innuendos, including scenes in which goo was squirted on young actresses’ faces and also recalled a time where she contacted Nickelodeon about a scene where she was eating a pickle while applying lip gloss and expressed that it was too sexual to air but Nickelodeon aired it anyway.
She also says that Dan Schneider, the creator of shows like Zoey 101, Victorious, iCarly, and Drake & Josh, often neglected Nickelodeon’s standards department and that the executive producer would allegedly suggest “skimpier options” for costumes and that none of his shows had more than two female writers.
The actress noted that most of the show was “very PC, funny, silly, friendly, and chill,” but questionable scenes still arose.
“Do I wish certain things, like, didn’t have to be so sexualized? Yeah. A hundred percent,” she said.
Russell Hicks, Nickelodeon’s former president of content development and production, said that standards and practices read all the scripts for Schneider’s shows and that programming executives and parents and guardians watched every episode on the set.
“Every single thing that Dan ever did on any of his shows was carefully scrutinized and approved,” he wrote in a statement.
Zoey 101 actress Alexa Nikolas, who starred in the first two seasons, also reportedly to have recently protested outside of Nickelodeon’s Burbank offices with her organization, Eat Predators. She has been very vocal about the “traumatizing” experience alleging that Schneider once “screamed at her until she broke down in tears” and that he would “often take photos with teenage actresses sitting on his lap.”
“It shouldn’t be a woman having to trail blaze, it should be on the industry itself. Because a predator’s gonna come and go, there’s always going to be a predator. But if they don’t have a safe haven, then they can’t really perpetuate that abuse.” She says in an interview with Variety.
These claims also come weeks after iCarly star Jennette McCurdy released her memoir titled I’m Glad My Mom Died, where she also details the trauma she experienced as a child star inflicted by Schneider himself.
Other POP! stories you might like:
Not lip-syncing? Grande and Gillies sing live in clip of ‘Victorious’ shoot
