Diving Into Nickelodeon's Dark Side: The Most Shocking Revelations From Quiet on Set || AKKU NEWS ||

Diving Into Nickelodeon's Dark Side: The Most Shocking Revelations From Quiet on Set || AKKU NEWS ||

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Drake Bell said he was sexually abused during his time as a Nickelodeon star, bullying allegations against prolific producer Dan Schneider and more bombshells from a new ID docuseries.

"I often look back at that time and wonder how in the world I survived."

So Drake Bell says in Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a new Investigation Discovery series that digs into the bittersweet experiences of a number of former child actors who got their big break as part of Nickelodeon's pop culture-dominating lineup of kid-friendly programming in the 1990s and 2000s.

Though whether shows like All That, The Amanda Show, iCarly, Zoey 101 and more were even all that kid-friendly is one of the questions explored in the four-part series, which premiered March 17.

Bell's revelation—that he was the 15-year-old victim who was never publicly identified when child sex abuse charges were filed against dialogue coach Brian Peck in 2003—has already made headlines, this marking the first time the now 37-year-old Drake & Josh alum has spoken out about what happened to him.

"I've never talked about this outside of therapy," Bell notes in the series.

But throughout Quiet on Set, actors, writers, directors and others who worked on the Nickelodeon shows run by onetime network super-producer Dan Schneider paint a disturbing picture of joy and fun radiating from the finished product juxtaposed with a frequently tense and at times allegedly abusive atmosphere behind the scenes.

When the ID series was announced in February with the network release promising a deep dive into an "insidious environment rife with allegations of abuse, sexism, racism and inappropriate dynamics with underage stars and crew," a rep for Schneider told E! News in a statement that the now-58-year-old was the "biggest champion" of all the young people he worked with at Nickelodeon.

Schneider was best known as an actor for the 1980s sitcom Head of the Class before he broke through as a writer on the sketch series All That in 1994.

"The fact is many of the kids on these shows are put in the untenable position of becoming the breadwinner for their family and the pressure that comes along with that," the statement continued. "Add on top of that the difficulties of growing up and having to do so under the spotlight while working a demanding job, all as a child. That is why there are many levels of standards, executives, lawyers, teachers and parents everywhere, all the time, on every set, every day. However, it is still a hard place to be a kid and nobody knew that better than Dan."

Russell Hicks, former president of Content and Production at Nickelodeon and an 18-year veteran of the network before stepping down in 2016, told E! News in a statement that Schneider "cared about the kids on his shows even when sometimes their own families unfortunately did not."

"What people seem to be forgetting," Hicks continued, "is the fact that the network has a talent management department that is keeping tabs on everything that is happening and going to every event these kids go to. There is a standards and practices group that reads every script and programming executives looking at every episode. Add to that every day on every set, were the parents and caregivers and their friends watching every single frame of footage and listening to every joke. Every single thing that Dan ever did on any of his shows was carefully scrutinized and approved by executives at Nickelodeon."