All That Actor Lori Beth Denberg Says Dan Schneider ‘Preyed’ on Her
The actor Lori Beth Denberg, who starred on the hit Nickelodeon show All That from the mid to late 1990s, has accused Dan Schneider of showing her pornography when she was a teenager. In an interview with Business Insider Tuesday, Denberg said that in 1995, shortly after the first season of All That wrapped, Schneider invited her into his office to discuss having heard that a female producer had spoken with her about her weight gain.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]During this meeting, Denberg said, Schneider started showing her clips of pornography. “I feel like that is the first time he preyed on me,” she said.
She told Business Insider that during her four years on set between 1994 and 1998, Schneider, who worked with Nickelodeon on shows until 2018, “put her in countless uncomfortable situations.” The former executive producer “lashed out at her on set, played porn for her on multiple occasions, and once initiated phone sex,” the publication reported. Denberg said Schneider also played a video of a woman performing oral sex on a donkey as the “grand finale.”
Schneider is the subject of the Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kid’s TV docuseries that premiered on Max in March. He was Nickelodeon’s “golden boy” finding success with multiple children’s shows, including The Amanda Show, iCarly, Drake & Josh, and Zoey 101. The docuseries looked at years of multiple allegations of Schneider fostering a toxic workplace environment and putting children in compromising positions from former cast and crew that worked on his shows. Denberg’s accusations are not first time Schneider has been said to have shown a female employee porn; in the documentary, a writer on The Amanda Show, Jenny Kilgen, said Schneider showed her porn on his computer.
Read More: Dan Schneider Sues Quiet on Set Docuseries Producers for Defamation
In a statement emailed to TIME, Schneider said the claims are “wildly exaggerated and, in most cases, false.” He said he takes ownership for not always making the right decisions when he was the head of these shows, saying, “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,” he said. “But I cannot apologize for things I did not do.”
Earlier this month, Schneider filed a defamation lawsuit against the Quiet on Set docuseries producers. In his statement on Tuesday, Schneider said he finds it “more than coincidental” that the reporter Denberg spoke to was the same journalist who led a 2022 investigation in which former employees detailed being asked for on-set massages by Schneider, among other allegations—and was one of the executive producers for Quiet on Set.
Denberg detailed different instances where Schneider made her uncomfortable when she was young, Business Insider reported. She says their relationship became sexual in nature when she was 19, about two years into working on All That. Business Insider reported that she slept over at Schneider’s house more than once. “While they were not sexually intimate during these sleepovers, Denberg said they would give each other massages and that Schneider frequently played porn on his computer,” the publication wrote. One of Denberg’s high school friends corroborated this claim.
Denberg called her relationship with Schneider a “weird, abusive friendship,” saying she was speaking out now because she wants Nickelodeon to take responsibility. “There’s right and wrong,” Denberg said, “and there’s true and false.”