Kenan Thompson has talked about his time working with Dan Schneider at Nickelodeon for the first time since the release of the documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
The veteran Saturday Night Live cast member worked on Schneider-produced shows All That and its spinoff series, Kenan & Kel, in the 1990s.
During Wednesday’s Tamron Hall Show, he talked about his experience now that the documentary has blown the lid off the situation (Thompson’s comments on it start at 6:30 in the above video.)
“It’s tough. It’s a tough subject, you know?” Thompson said. “It’s tough for me because I can’t really speak on things that I never witnessed, you know what I’m saying? Because all these things happened after I left, basically.”
He continued, “Dan wasn’t really on Kenan & Kel like that,” he said. “I mean, he got a ‘created by’ credit, but it was a different showrunner, so our worlds wasn’t really overly overlapping like that outside of All That, necessarily. And then all of that negativity kinda started happening outside of our tenure there, you know what I mean? So I wasn’t really aware of a lot of it.”
Schneider wasn’t as detached as Thompson indicates. He had writing credits on 11 Kenan & Kel episodes, and is credited as a co-executive producer on every episode of the show’s first two seasons.
Schneider also wrote and produced numerous episodes of All That that Thompson appeared in. He also had a screenwriter and co-producer credit on Good Burger, the movie spinoff of the All That segment.
Thompson expressed sympathy to his fellow former Nickelodeon stars who discussed the toxic work environment they endured in Quiet on Set.
“My heart goes out to anybody that’s been victimized, or their families,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing that the doc is out and it’s putting things on display, stories that need to be told for accountability’s sake. But it’s definitely tough to watch because I have fond memories of that place and I have fond memories of my costars and stuff like that. So to hear that they’ve gone through terrible things like that is really tough.”
Thompson added, “Investigate more,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a safe place for kids. And to hear all about that is just like, ‘How dare you?’”