'I Feel So Guilty Saying That': Kenan Thompson Talks Nickelodeon Tenure And Why Quiet On Set Shook Him Up
The Quiet On Set documentary launched a conversation about the treatment of child actors that is still ongoing. While some of the accusations leveled against producer Dan Schneider and others had been heard before, there was so much that we hadn’t heard that many who grew up watching those Nickelodeon shows are now re-evaluating. The same is the case for those who were on those shows, like SNL’s Kenan Thompson.
Before Thompson was an SNL player he was one of the breakout members of the cast of Nickelodeon's All That, a kids version of the sketch comedy series. Thompson himself has spoken about his very positive memories of working at Nickelodeon, but in a recent conversation with Variety, he admits those comments now make him feel guilty, because he realizes how many people did not have his experience. Thompson said…
I feel so guilty saying that. All those things started happening after our tenure, because, I guess, no one would even dare. It wasn’t that kind of environment. There was no dictatorship about it all. We were all building something and, when you’re building something, I don’t think anybody’s cocky enough to be pulling things behind the curtain.
Many Nickelodeon stars of the past have been asked about their time following Quiet On Set. Kenan Thompson's experience was similar to others. Melissa Joan Hart said she never heard any such allegations against anyone, but she believes those that have come forward.
Dan Schneider produced All That and was a writer on the original Good Burger movie, which saw a sequel last year. Kenan Thompson tells Variety he’d still love to go back and do more with those characters, alongside partner Kel Mitchell, in part because there are many others responsible for Good Burger who can move it forward.
Having said that, Thompson admits that he has reevaluated things since Quiet On Set. The question of how to handle the popular and successful art created by somebody who is later found to be a less-than-upstanding person is one that others have wrestled with, and Thompson is now doing the same. He compares the Dan Schneider situation to that of Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby. He explained…
The separation of the artist and the man conversation didn’t come into my life at all until recently. There was no need to do that. A guy was a pig, and we knew he was a pig, but it wasn’t like the deviousness since, like, [Bill] Cosby and [Harvey] Weinstein. All that shit is just way out of bounds. If people were like that, it’s coming to the light, and that’s great.”
It’s certainly a complicated question that a lot of people have wrestled with. Discovering that a piece of media you love was created in circumstances that were potentially dangerous to the people who made it can make watching that media much harder. Thompson certainly doesn’t have an answer, but he wants to make sure that the victims aren’t forgotten. He continued…
That whole thing has just been such a burden for recent times — the conversation of, ‘Do we still listen to Michael [Jackson]?’ ‘Do we still listen to R. Kelly?’ What do we do with ‘The Cosby Show’? I think we’re all still figuring it out and navigating. Because the trauma is real, the victims are very real. I don’t want to gloss over that. We also don’t want to just throw really solid, creative things in the trash either.
Dan Schneider is suing the producers of the Quiet on Set documentary for defamation. He denies many of the allegations of misconduct that the film portrayed.
