Jennie Garth and Dan Schneider Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Eric Vitale/Getty Images Jennie Garth is opening up about working with disgraced producer Dan Schneider on the WB series What I Like About You.
While sitting down for the Armchair Expert podcast on Monday, the actress, who starred in the series alongside Amanda Bynes for four seasons starting in 2002, recalled getting “bad vibes” from Schneider and, because of that, preferred to communicate with series co-creator Will Calhoun.
“To the point where I said to Will, like, ‘I would rather just communicate solely with you. I trust you. I think that you have my best interests in mind, and I don’t feel that way with your partner. So I’d rather just be with you.’ And he was like, ‘No problem,’” she said.
Related Stories
General News Jennie Garth Gets Real About Rock Bottom, Sobriety and Being "Paralyzed" By Luke Perry's Death
TV Drake Bell, Josh Peck Discuss Rehab, Recovery and Amanda Bynes
When first approached to star in the series, Garth said of Schneider, “He was kind of the Amanda side of it; she had worked with him a lot on The Amanda Show and all the things. So, he had hooked his wagon onto her.”
When Garth was asked whether she witnessed Bynes being “destroyed” by Schneider, Garth said “not specifically him” but added, “There were a lot of problems in the ecosystem of her.” Garth said that when they filmed the pilot she was 30 and Bynes was 16. “I didn’t know how to be around a teenage girl. She taught me so much,” Garth explained after being asked if she helped Bynes navigate early stardom given her experience on 90210.
The comments mark Garth’s first time speaking about Schneider at length. When asked in 2024 about her working relationship with Schneider, she bluntly stated to THR, “I don’t want to talk about Dan Schneider ever again in my life.”
In 2024, Investigation Discovery released the four-part docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which made claims about toxic workplaces for child actors and crews on the Nickelodeon series Schneider created and ran including The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, iCarly, Victorious and Sam & Cat. Among the allegations were that he tolerated toxic workplace conditions, allegedly tormented and humiliated the cast and crew on his TV sets, was inappropriate to young females who worked for him and wrote inappropriate scripts for child actors to perform.
Garth noted to THR at the time that she had not heard from her co-star Bynes since the airing of the documentary but did say, “I just love her, and I would love to see her at any point.”
In a video exclusively obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Schneider said of the docuseries, “When I watched the show, I could see the hurt in some people’s eyes, and it made me feel awful and regretful and sorry. I wish I could go back, especially to those earlier years of my career, and bring the growth and the experience that I have now and just do a better job and never, ever feel like it was OK to be an asshole to anyone, ever.”
“There are definitely things that I would do differently,” he said. “The main thing that I would change is how I treat people and everyone. I definitely at times didn’t give people the best of me. I didn’t show enough patience. I could be cocky and definitely over-ambitious, and sometimes just straight up rude and obnoxious, and I’m sorry that I ever was.”
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe Sign Up
