Dan Schneider Defends His Relationship With Amanda Bynes, Claims He Always 'Supported' Her
After coming under fire for the shocking allegations aired out on Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, Dan Schneider is defending the relationship he had with a young Amanda Bynes.
In the docuseries, the Nickelodeon head honcho was accused of multiple instances of inappropriate behavior on set, including allegations of sexual misconduct, creating a toxic work environment and gender discrimination.
Bynes — who has been out of the spotlight for years and has struggled with her mental health — didn't appear in the project, but Schneider brought her up in a YouTube interview he did after the doc debuted.
In particular, the 58-year-old insisted he was on good terms with the What a Girl Wants actress, 37, noting he "supported her" when she wanted to emancipate herself from her parents.
"Amanda was between the ages of 16 and 17 and she wanted to get emancipated from her parents, which was a fairly common thing with successful young actors — at least at the time," he explained. "She wanted that for herself, so she turned to her team, which included her lawyer, her agent, her manager, her publicist, me — because she included me as part of her team, thought of me that way."
"We supported her, she tried to get emancipated and it ended up not working out and she didn’t," he added.
Schneider — who worked on hit Nickelodeon shows like iCarly, Drake and Josh, The Amanda Show and All That — also shared details from the private conversation he had with Bynes about the situation.
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"One night very late, well after midnight, 1 or 2 in the morning, phone rang, I answered, it was Amanda. She was upset. She was in distress. She had had some conflict with her parents, I think her father, and she called me," he remembered. "I was immediately concerned about her safety."
"I called someone that I knew was fairly nearby. That person was able to go and pick her up. I knew she was safe, I felt better. She ended up being taken to the police," he concluded.
In his interview, Schneider denied some accusations but apologized for others.
Some of the allegations he acknowledged included making sexual innuendos in the scripts and participating in cringeworthy scenes with teens, one of which featured himself and Bynes in a hot tub together.
"Facing my past behaviors, some of which are embarrassing and that I regret, I definitely owe some people a pretty strong apology," he stated.
"Every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny — and only funny," he explained. "Now, we have some adults looking back at them 20 years later through their lens and they're looking at them and they're saying, 'I don't think that's inappropriate for a kids' show.' And I have no problem with that... Let's cut those jokes out of the show."