The former 'Unfabulous' actress admits that she felt 'completely terrified' after watching the bombshell docuseries which talks about the toxic and abusive environment inside '90s kids' TV.
- Jul 8, 2024
AceShowbiz - Emma Roberts has broken her silence on bombshell allegations shared on Investigation Discovery's tell-all docuseries, "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side Of Kids". The former child actress admitted that she felt "completely terrified" after watching the show, which talked about the toxic and abusive environment inside '90s kids' TV.
In her interview with Variety, Emma claimed she was "shocked" by the story, noting "that was not" her experience while working for Nickelodeon. "It made me really, really, really sad that that was happening to people that I literally saw often and had no idea," the "American Horror Story" star shared.
Emma used to star on "Unfabulous", between 2004 to 2007. She gushed over the show for having an "amazing woman named Sue Rose" as its showrunner. "I didn't realize at the time, but a female showrunner back then was not very common," she recalled. "But that was my intro into working on a TV show."
"Also, my mom was with me 24/7, and even I would be like, 'You don't have to be here all the time,' she was like, 'I do actually. I'm not letting you out of my sight. You're not going to a fitting by yourself when you're 13 years old,' " The "Holidate" star explained.
Upon learning of her colleagues' bad experience, the "Scream Queens" actress said, "I just feel like children need to be protected on sets, as do adults, and I feel like we're working towards a better work environment in that sense. But yeah, that documentary really kept me up at night."
Prior to this, Ariana Grande also weighed in on "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" during her appearance on Penn Badgley's "Podcrushed" podcast. She shared that it's "devastating" to learn about the negative experiences that some of her colleagues had while starring on Nickelodeon shows.
"I think the environment needs to be made safer if kids are going to be acting, and I think there should be therapists," the "Boy Is Mine" singer said. "I think parents should allowed to be wherever they want to be, and I think not only on kids' sets. If anyone wants to do this, or music, or anything at this level of exposure, there should be in the contract something about therapy is mandatory twice a week or thrice a week, or something like that."
"I think we had some very special memories, and we feel so privileged to be able to create those roles and become a part of something that was so special for a lot of young kids," Ariana continued, before adding that she's now "reprocessing" what she was told to do and say back at those time. "Specifically about our show, I think that was something that we were convinced was the cool thing about us - is that we pushed the envelope with our humor," she said.
The "Wicked" actress further noted, "And the innuendos were … it was, like, the cool differentiation. And I don't know, I think it just all happened so quickly, and now looking back on some of the clips, I'm like, 'Damn, really? Oh, s**t' … and the things that weren't approved for the network were snuck onto, like, our website or whatever. I guess I'm upset, yeah."