Alexa Nikolas has seen Dan Schneider’s apology video… and she has THOUGHTS.
In the wake of Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids’ TV, which explored the Nickelodeon boss’ toxic workplace behavior, Schneider came forward with an on-camera apology. He addressed some of the “hurt” he caused people, for which he feels “regretful,” “sorry,” and “embarrassed.” He said:
“The main thing that I would change is how I treat people and everyone. I definitely at times didn’t give people the best of me. I didn’t show enough patience. I could be cocky and definitely over-ambitious, and sometimes just straight up rude and obnoxious and I’m sorry that I ever was.”
You can read more about everything he touched on HERE. But one thing he conveniently ignored? All of Alexa’s allegations against him!
Related: Drake Bell Checked Into Rehab Before Participating In Quiet On Set
Back in 2022, the Zoey 101 star claimed that during her time on the show — when she was just 12 years old — Dan “had a digital camera and would go around with money and ask to take photos of the kids’ feet.” WTF, right? She also claimed he sat in on her costume fittings when she was a kid. And she isn’t even the only one who’s made those claims!
Alexa isn’t the only one from the Zoey 101 crew who isn’t a fan of Dan, as Jack Salvatore dropped some pretty disturbing allegations about him last week, too. It seems a lot of former child stars have been waiting for this moment. So you bet she tuned in to his apology to see if he offered up any words for her. She was about to be horribly disappointed.
In a video posted to her YouTube account late last week, the now 31-year-old gave her live reaction to her former boss’ apology. She could not BELIEVE how much he made the video about how hurt HE was:
“He’s embarrassed? I’m sorry, him centering what he feels is bizarre to me. It’s like you literally… you are awful! To be quite honest with you, awful. You’re embarrassed? Not embarrassed enough! Not embarrassed enough to go reach out to the people you actually harmed.”
She blasted Schneider for acting like he was just being rude — when the accusations are far worse:
“Uncomfortable? You exploited children! … It’s, like, as if he just, I don’t know, one day had a fit or something, is how he’s acting. Like it was just this ‘I’m sorry,’ like it was just this one-time event. People were just, like, affected by it. These are children, Dan. Children that you exploited!”
The child star said she didn’t “feel any remorse” coming from Dan. Later in her lengthy video, she added:
“I’m going to cut to the chase here: you don’t feel anything, Dan. You have no idea what accountability is. You’re searching for it, maybe, but you haven’t landed on it. That’s for sure. This is not the way.”
Oof. Watch the full video (below):
But that wasn’t all!
After posting her video, she spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and revealed even more. She reiterated how he was right there in the fitting room when she tried on different outfits. But that’s not all — she says he also “handpicked” the shortest skirts for her. She says he chose miniskirts “so short” the network made her wear biker shorts underneath!
“I was told [I had to wear the shorts] so that nobody sees my butt. It’s humiliating for a child to be told, ‘We just want to make sure that your butt doesn’t show!’ You look back at that and you’re like, ‘Why don’t you just give me clothes that don’t show my butt?’ Like, that’s freaking weird! Dan wants these skirts; he’s the one handpicking them and he has all creative control. It’s pretty scary looking back at that experience.”
ICK!
Schneider didn’t respond to THR, but the show’s costumer Kris Dangl denied the showrunner was picking out the skirts. He added:
“If a skirt was short, then you wore shorter bike shorts. The skirts got shorter and more sporty at that time when we were doing Zoey 101 because it was a very sporty time, like a lot of tennis skirts and very short, sporty Abercrombie and Fitch skirts.”
Thoughts, Perezcious readers? Let us know down in the comments.
[Images via Alexa Nikolas, DanWarp, & Nickelodeon/YouTube]