Liz Gillies Watched "Quiet On Set" With Ariana Grande Over FaceTime And Said It Made Them "Reevaluate" Their Experience On Nickelodeon
Liz Gillies is the latest former Nickelodeon star to break their silence on Investigation Discovery's Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
The docuseries, released earlier this year, focuses on the allegedly toxic and abusive culture that child stars faced during their time at Nickelodeon.
Since its release, several former Nickelodeon stars have commented on the claims made in the doc, along with sharing their own experiences working for the network alongside Dan Schneider.
Nickelodeon said in a statement to BuzzFeed, "Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crew, but of all children, and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”
In a recent interview with Variety, Liz, who starred in Dan Schneider's series Victorious, confirmed that she had watched the docuseries and even watched it while on FaceTime with her close friend and former costar Ariana Grande.
Liz's response comes a month after Ariana spoke publicly about the doc on an episode of Penn Badgley's podcast Podcrushed. When asked about her relationship with child acting, Ariana said, "Obviously, my relationship with it has and is currently and has been changing, and I'm reprocessing a lot of what the experience was like."
"I think that the environment needs to be made safer if kids are going to be acting," Ariana continued. "I think there should be therapists. I think there should be parents allowed to be wherever they wanna be. 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.'"
"I certainly reevaluated my experience with Ariana over FaceTime," Liz told Variety. "We watched it together, and then we got together later that week or the next week, and we sort of broke the whole thing down and talked about it, and reprocessed everything together. There was a lot to go through."
"It’s tricky when you look back on something incredibly positively, and then you learn a lot of information and also revisit things as an adult through a new lens that reframe the memories in your mind a little bit, or cloud them, or taint them — maybe rightfully so," she added.
"So, taking that time to thoughtfully look back, reassess and reevaluate was an important thing to do, and that’s something we did. I’m very lucky I have such a close relationship with my cast — and with Ari — and that we were all able to do that together, because we definitely leaned on each other, talked amongst each other and checked in with each other," she continued.
Then, when asked what protections she thought should be put in place for child actors, she said, "I think parents should be allowed to be wherever they want to be, whenever they want to be. I actually think it’s important that some type of a guardian is there, particularly if the children are very young."
"I would assume now going forward, things will be very different. In the event that they’re not different, I do think the responsibility is on the parent to assess the situation. And sometimes, the parents are part of the problem too. I think you’ve got to listen to your kid, too, and know what kind of a kid you have. And I know that sounds weird, but certain kids don’t really know what they’re getting themselves into. A lot of the realities of acting in general, even if you take the word 'child' out of it — it’s grueling, it’s difficult. The child has to want it so much," she added.
"I almost wonder if a psychiatrist or a psychologist should evaluate the child and speak to the parents before they sign them off to let them be on a set or a show, just because it’s such a huge undertaking, and children don’t often know what a huge undertaking it is, and then they can feel trapped or pressured. ... [Parents] have to make sure that there is respect on the set for the children, that they’re being treated as children, although it is an adult job. It’s a tough one, man," she continued.
"I cannot imagine what it must feel like for a child that was pushed there by their parents and had no interest in acting and had to come to work and do that grueling job every single day because for me, it was a treat. And for someone else, I mean, what a nightmare," she said.
"It’s like, if someone made me go play baseball for 10 hours a day, I’d be crying in my room at night. It’s just because it’s not what I want to do. Everything’s hard. Sports are hard. Acting is hard. Any job is hard. And if it’s not your dream and you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, it can be a total nightmare, and it can be very damaging to your life, your mind and your mental health," she finished.
Read Liz's full interview here.
And you can read other former Nickelodeon stars' statements about Quiet on Set here.
