It’s been months since Quiet On Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV came out, but any and every Nickelodeon actor willing to go on the record is still being asked about their experiences and their reaction. Melissa Joan Hart, Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, and Ariana Grande have already shared their thoughts, and now Emma Roberts is joining their ranks. “I was completely horrified and shocked because that was not my experience,” Roberts says in a new Variety interview. “It made me really, really, really sad that that was happening to people that I literally saw often and had no idea.”
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Roberts’ career was kickstarted on the Nick series Unfabulous, which aired from 2004 to 2007. She says the positive environment can at least be partially credited to having a female showrunner (Sue Rose), which she “didn’t realize at the time” was an uncommon experience. “Also, my mom was with me 24/7, and even I would be like, ‘You don’t have to be here all the time,’ she was like, ‘I do actually. I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re not going to a fitting by yourself when you’re 13 years old.’”
It does sound like the Unfabulous set was a safer, saner one than how Dan Schenider’s shows have been described. But it also must be noted that Roberts comes from a showbiz family: character actor Eric Roberts is her father, and Julia Roberts is her aunt. That reputation in itself makes her less likely to experience the kind of abuses that her less seasoned peers might endure. (Remember how Britney Spears bullied one of her sister Jamie Lynn’s Zoey 101 co-stars? Fame protects fame!) It also means her guardians had a better awareness of on-set issues than other stage parents. Not everyone coming into the industry is necessarily savvy enough to know that they need to be with their kid at every costume fitting the way that Roberts’ mother was.
“It makes me really sad, and I just feel like children need to be protected on sets, as do adults, and I feel like we’re working towards a better work environment in that sense,” Roberts reflects about the current state of child stardom in her interview. “But yeah, that documentary really kept me up at night.”