Actress Lori Beth Denberg is accusing Nickelodeon producer and writer Dan Schneider of fondling her breasts and showing her porn when she was a teenage cast member of the poplar ’90s series All That.
Schneider has apologized if he made Denberg uncomfortable, but also says that some of her allegations are untrue and he can’t apologize for something he did not do.
Denberg was a member of kids sketch comedy show during its first four seasons from 1994 to 1998 and joined the show when she was 18.
The now 48-year-old says that she first noticed Schneider trying to get close to her when another executive told her she was overweight. “I feel like that is the first time he preyed on me,” Denberg told Business Insider.
She went on to say that Schneider used that negativity to try and get her to open up to his advances. Soon after he was exposing her to pornography and attempting to engage her in phone sex, she said.
Denberg also alleged that Schneider sometimes yelled at her, that one of the porn videos he showed her including a woman giving oral sex to a donkey, and he once pushed a gun toward her when she was a passenger in his car.
Schneider, though, calls Denberg’s claims “wildly exaggerated and, in most cases, false.” He also accused Denberg of being part of an effort to make him look bad after he filed a defamation lawsuit against the producers of the exposé series, Quiet on the Set, which has set out to chronicle abuse of child actors at Nickelodeon.
“The fact that an executive producer of ‘Quiet on Set’ would pursue allegations regarding what may have happened between adults nearly thirty years ago — only a week after I filed a defamation lawsuit accusing ‘Quiet on Set’ of being intentionally false and misleading — seems more than coincidental,” Schneider said in a statement.
“As I have previously stated, there were times, particularly in the early years of my career, that I made mistakes and exhibited poor judgment as a leader. If I did that with respect to Lori Beth, I sincerely apologize to her. But I cannot apologize for things I did not do,” he explained.
Denberg also alleged that when she turned 19, her relationship with Schneider became sexual and repeated porn viewings was a part of that relationship. But she also says Schneider became abusive during their relationship. Still, she claims that at the time she did not feel their relationship was inappropriate.
But now, Denberg claims that Schneider took advantage of her. “I couldn’t have been more green. I couldn’t have been more vulnerable,” she said of her early days in the entertainment industry.”
Schneider was fired by Nickelodeon in 2018 after an internal investigation showed that he had been “abusive” toward young actors. However, the investigation did not turn up any allegations of sexual abuse at the time.
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