" I ’ve made a alternative for several reasons to choose out of choosing to watch that imagination . "
FormerDisneyChannel starChristy Carlson Romanoexplained why she has refused to watchQuiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
Christy spoke on an episode of the podcastMayim Bialik’s Breakdownwith host Mayim and special guest Jenna von Oÿ about her perspective on the documentary and how she feels the filmmakers are “outsiders” and “trauma tourists.”
You might remember Christy as a young Broadway star, Ren fromEven Stevens,or the voice ofKim Possibleon the Disney Channel.
Likewise, Mayim and Jenna were also young actors on the'90s sitcomBlossom.
“I think that it’s extremely triggering. I’ve made a choice for several reasons to opt out of choosing to watch that imagery,” Christy said, explaining her opinion about the Investigation Discovery docuseries.
Christy claimed that filmmakers had previously approached her to appear in documentaries about child actors.
“I’ve chosen not to speak about this with anybody, including ID, who originally came to me looking to see if I’d be interested in a doc like this.”
“I don’t know if it was this doc [Quiet on Set]. But I was approached when I first started advocating three years ago for my own YouTube channel with my own experiences that I did in different and separate episodes, so to speak. I started to be approached by many reality-show-type producers, and they were like, ‘Hey, how do we do this?’ and I would combat them with saying, ‘Hey, guys, the only way we would do this is if we talk about how do we fix it?'”
“These are people who don’t belong to our community,” she said. “These are outsiders. And maybe they, maybe if they knew where to put money towards [fixing] a problem, they would, but again, a lot of this has been perceived in a way that’s outside baseball. It’s not inside baseball; it’s outside baseball. These are trauma tourists.”
Christy explained why she thinks documentaries likeQuiet on Setcan be exploitative and are not helpful.
“Alyson Stoner [another former child actor], who is a fantastic advocate in this space, has really impinged upon me the importance of understanding trauma porn,” Christy said. “I actually have a degree from Columbia in film, and you know, we know that the art of montage and the collision of images is going to incite a certain kind of emotion.”
“That is what documentary filmmaking in social movements is meant to do. And so we’re so manipulated by media, and we have so many little cut-downs of misinformation and things being thrown, that the echo chambers, to me, are not helpful.”
Christy said elsewhere in the podcast that she also knows several actors involved in the docuseries. She and Mayim avoided naming anyone in particular, but one story in the docuseries that involved Christy’s known colleagues surrounded Drake Bell.
In 2003, voice coachBrian Peckpleaded no contest to performing lewd acts with a teenager, which resulted in a 16-month prison sentence. In theQuiet on Setdocuseries, Drake revealed he was the teenager involved in the case.
Christy has worked with Drake on her show,Christy’s Kitchen Throwback,but she also has a relatively well-known working relationship with another person mentioned inQuiet on Set.
According to the docuseries, several people, including James Marsden, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle, wrote letters of support at the time. Both Rider and Will were actors on Disney. Will and Christy worked onKim Possibleand theI Hear Voicespodcast.
On the Feb. 19 episode of thePod Meets Worldpodcast, Will addressed his involvement in the case. “[Peck] asked us to support him and go to court with him, which a lot of us did,” Will said. “And we’re sitting in that courtroom, on the wrong side of everything — of course, having no idea of this — filled with child actors. To the point where the victim’s mother turned and said, ‘Look at all the famous people you brought with you. And it doesn’t change what you did to my kid.'”
While she doesn’t clearly state it onMayim Bialik’s Breakdown, it seems Christy’s relationship with both the actors and survivors involved and her perspective on the unhelpful nature of “trauma porn” documentaries have given her pause on watching the series.
Listen to the full episode ofMayim Bialik’s Breakdownhere.
