“You’re watching what the entire culture was like”: Mayim Bialik on ‘Quiet on Set’ series

On a new installment of her podcast The Breakdown, former child star Mayim Bialik welcomed former colleagues Jenna von Oy, with whom she starred on Blossom, and Christy Carlson Romano from Even Stevens to discuss the bombshell documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.

Bialik expressed, “Of course it touched me personally. … You’re watching what the entire culture was like. This is not what happened because ‘Nickelodeon this-that.'” 

Carlson Romano, who has become an advocate for child actors, said she deliberately didn’t watch the Investigation Discovery series. She said the company approached her, but she turned them down. “These are outsiders,” she said of the filmmakers, labeling them “trauma tourists.”

She added of the documentary’s alleged victims, “Every child who managed to get in through that front door had to say yes to everything. … And I think that they’re the perfect landscape to be vulnerable.”

Von Oy said, “It dug a very deep hole in my heart to hear about people I knew who … supported a person that they heard a confession from,” referencing former dialogue coach Brian Peck, who was found guilty of sexual abuse of Nickelodeon star Drake Bell. During his trial, a handful of famous actors sat on his side of the courtroom; some wrote letters of support for Peck.

“I’m unsure if there’s a way to have hope when the system is designed to gain the maximum compliance from children who are performers,” Bialik said. 

Carlson Romano commented, “I think we’re all kind of living with a little bit of survivor’s guilt. That could have been any one of us, and we all kind of need to grieve together I think at this point and sort of come together to try to figure out what now.”