Nickelodeon Alum Lori Beth Denberg Says She Tried To Protect ‘Gaunt’ & Overworked Amanda Bynes From Dan Schneider - And Got Banned!

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

Lori Beth Denberg says she tried to sound the alarm on Dan Schneider decades ago.

The All That alum revealed shocking claims against the Nickelodeon boss in an interview with Business Insider published on Tuesday. From allegations of initiating phone sex to sharing disturbing porn and sexually explicit massages, Lori spoke in detail about Dan for the first time publicly — and exactly 30 years after getting her start on the network in 1994. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t raising flags behind the scenes for years before this…

In addition to Lori’s allegations that we previously reported, she spoke out about Dan’s highly-criticized relationship with Amanda Bynes, whom she met on All That in 1996. As we covered, Lori left the show in 1998 after suffering through years of her “weird, abusive friendship” with Dan, as she put it. But about a year later, Amanda landed The Amanda Show and reached out to Lori to come visit the set. Lori told the outlet, “I decided that I loved her more than I hated Dan,” and agreed to go, despite having zero interest in being anywhere near the TV producer.

You see, she’d always been worried about how Dan treated Amanda. She recalled the Easy A star’s first day shooting All That when she was just 10 years old. Apparently Dan changed her lines at the last minute, which upset young Amanda, so Lori — who was ten years older — stepped in and defended her. She told Dan that he couldn’t switch up “the little girl’s lines on the spot.” But she said he disagreed with that, and responded:

“I can do whatever I want.”

So with that in mind, she wanted to make sure things were going well on set of the new show. But when she got there, she said Amanda looked far from well…

She described how the then-13-year-old looked “gaunt,” and apparently overheard Dan saying that filming had to pause because the young girl was so tired. With thoughts of her own negative experiences with Dan, she went up the ladder to his boss Brian Robbins of Tollin/Robbins Productions, who also served as Amanda’s talent manager. Lori said she expressed worry for Amanda and broke down in tears thinking about her own experiences with Dan. But Brian apparently didn’t ask any follow-up questions or dig deeper. Oof…

Lori said she already hadn’t trusted Brian because he and Dan had been longtime friends, and he apparently knew about all Dan’s weird on-set massages and angry outbursts. So, she took matters to Albie Hecht, the president of Nickelodeon Entertainment. In their 2000 meeting, she expressed the same worry for Amanda that she did in her meeting with Brian. She didn’t mention any of her own personal experiences with Dan, but says Albie was receptive of her concerns. Albie even called later to inform her that Amanda’s shooting schedule had been adjusted to be less demanding. And it sounds like that didn’t make a certain someone too happy…

Lori revealed that a friend who worked on The Amanda Show later informed her that a photo of her had been posted in the guard’s office to ban (!!!) her from entering the set. Another source corroborated this claim, telling Business Insider that not only was the photo hung, but it was known on set that Lori had been barred. This left the now 48-year-old with feelings of “disgust and defeat and sadness.” She told the outlet:

“I felt like I tried to help her — to help Amanda, and couldn’t.”

As we all know, Dan was eventually let go from the network in 2018. But wildly enough, Brian was promoted to co-CEO of Paramount Global, Nickelodeon’s parent media company, last month.

In her interview, Lori acknowledged that speaking out could harm her career in the industry, but said that she wants to make a positive change — and she wants Nickelodeon to be held accountable:

“There’s right and wrong, and there’s true and false.”

What do you make of these claims, Perezcious readers? Let us know down in the comments.

If you have sincere cause to suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org.

[Images via Pop TV, BooG!e Wonderland, & Nickelodeon/YouTube]