Ariana Grande says she’s ‘reprocessing’ her time on Nickelodeon
Ariana Grande is looking back on her time on Nickelodeon.
During a June 12 appearance on "Podcrushed," hosted by Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, Grande touched on child stardom, from the "beautiful things" to what she's "reprocessing." Grande starred on Nickelodeon's show “Victorious” from 2010 to 2013, then the spinoff show “Sam & Cat” from 2013 to 2014, according to IMDb.
Grande said she was 14 when she was cast on "Victorious" alongside co-star Elizabeth Gillies.
"We were all very excited and we got cast and it was the best news we could hear,” Grande told the podcast hosts. “We were young performers who just wanted to do this with our lives more than anything, and we got to, and that was so beautiful.
"I think we had some very special memories, and we feel so privileged to have been able to create those roles and be a part of something that was so special for a lot of young kids," she continued.
Now, she said she and other former Nickelodeon stars are “reprocessing our relationship to it a little bit now, if that makes sense."
Neither Grande nor the podcast hosts mention "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," the explosive, five-part documentary series that came out on Investigation Discovery in March. The documentary features former Nickelodeon child actors and former Nickelodeon employees who allege producer Dan Schneider oversaw a toxic work environment.
After the documentary was released, Schneider shared a video on his YouTube page March 19 where he responded to the allegations and apologized for his behaviors in the past.
“I definitely at times didn’t give people the best of me. I didn’t show enough patience I could be cocky and definitely overambitious and sometimes just straight-up rude and obnoxious and I am so sorry that I ever was," he said in the video.
Schneider filed a lawsuit against ID for defamation in May, and the lawsuit states the episodes "repeatedly state or imply that Schneider is a child sexual abuser.” TODAY.com had reached out to ID, Robertson and Schwartz, Maxine Productions, Sony Pictures Television Nonfiction and Business Insider for comment but did not hear back.
While she didn't participate in "Quiet on Set," Grande appears in archival footage meant to highlight jokes that, in retrospect, seem inappropriate for children's programming.
In one scene, Grande tries to "juice a potato" by moving her hands up and down over a brown potato.
During the same month that "Quiet on Set" was released, a spokesperson for Schneider told NBC News that “every scene was approved by the network and these shows are all still being aired today. If there was an actual problem, they would be taken down, but they air constantly all over the world, enjoyed by kids and parents.”
Grande did not comment at the time of “Quiet on Set’s” release and doesn't mention the documentary by name in "Podcrushed," either. But she did share her thoughts on child acting during the podcast episode, a theme that occurred on "Quiet on Set."
"My relationship to it has been changing. I'm reprocessing a lot of what the experience was like," she said.
"Quiet on Set" highlights two convicted sex offenders who worked on Nickelodeon sets: Brian Peck and Jason Michael Handy. In the documentary, Drake Bell came forward as the anonymous plaintiff in a suit against Peck, an actor and dialogue coach convicted in 2004. Court records show Peck pleaded no contest to two charges — lewd act upon a child 14 or 15 by a person 10 years older and oral copulation of a person under 16 — and the court found him guilty on both.
Around the time that "Quiet on Set" came out, Nickelodeon said in a comment to NBC News: “Though we cannot corroborate or negate allegations of behaviors from productions decades ago, Nickelodeon as a matter of policy investigates all formal complaints as part of our commitment to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct."
Without mentioning specifics, Grande referred to people who experienced the dark side of child stardom as “survivors,” and said, “There’s not a word for how devastating that is to hear about.”
She gave her recommendations for what should change on sets to protect child actors.
“I think the environment needs to be made safer if kids are going to be acting, and I think there should be therapists,” Grande said. “I think there should be parents allowed to be wherever they want to be, and I think not only on kids’ sets.
"I think if anyone wants to do this, or music, or anything at the level of exposure that it means to be on TV or to do music with a major label or whatever, there should be in the contract something about therapy is mandatory twice a week, or thrice a week, or something like that," she continued.
Grande said she recently spoke to music producer Max Martin, who worked with her on multiple albums including her latest "Eternal Sunshine," about this topic.
"He was always such an amazing person to talk to about the stressful parts of what I was experiencing. A lot of people don't have the support that they need to get through performing at that level at such a young age."
She said the "beautiful thing" about her time on "Victorious" was that she and co-star Gillies got to "fall in love with these characters we created."
"But yeah, the rest of it is still being worked on.”
In the months after the documentary's release, other former Nickelodeon stars not featured in "Quiet on Set" responded head-on to the allegations against Schneider, like fellow "Victorious" star Victoria Justice and Josh Peck of "Drake and Josh."
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
