Earlier this year, the docuseries Quiet on Set made waves for the harrowing allegations it leveled against Nickelodeon’s former star showrunner, Dan Schneider. Schneider created shows like Zoey 101, The Amanda Show, iCarly, and Victorious. The latter proved to be the breakout role for Ariana Grande, but the singer had not yet commented on the allegations that Schneider fostered inappropriate work environments, including having children act in scenes that involved sexual innuendo. On Wednesday, Grande addressed her child-star past on Podcrushed, Penn Badgley’s podcast.
“I think that the environment needs to be made safer if kids are going to be acting, and I think there should be therapists, I think there should be parents allowed to be wherever they want to be,” Grande continued. She also said that she believes therapy should be mandatory not just for underage actors on kids’ shows, but for any minor pursuing an entertainment career at a high level.
“A lot of people don’t have the support that they need to get through performing at that level at such a young age, but also dealing with some of the things that the survivors who have come forward … there’s not a word for how devastating that is to hear about,” Grande said. She did not explicitly refer to Quiet on Set, but noted that she was in the process of “reprocessing” her Nickelodeon experience.
Grande treaded carefully throughout the interview, never naming Schneider nor bad-mouthing Nickelodeon directly. The singer did acknowledge that there’s an inherent power imbalance on set, and that there’s “a strange pattern that occurs where it’s really taking advantage of how much it means to the young performer to get a laugh from Video Village.”
Grande’s time on Victorious and its spinoff, Sam & Cat, has been under scrutiny for years. In 2022, a compilation of Grande’s scenes went viral as people called out the show for seemingly sexualizing a then-teenager. In the video, Grande can be seen putting her feet in her mouth, sticking her finger down her throat, and lying with her head off of a bed while pouring water over her face.
“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,” Grande said of Victorious. “And the innuendos were … It was like the cool differentiation. I think it just all happened so quickly and now looking back on some of the clips, I’m like, ‘Damn, really? Oh, shit.’ And the things that weren’t approved for the network were snuck on to, like, our website or whatever. I guess I’m upset.”
