Former Nickelodeon host Marc Summers described his participation in the making of the “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” docuseries as a “bait and switch,” according to media reports.
In an interview on the “Elvis Duran and the Morning Show,” the former “Double Dare” and “What Would You Do?” host revealed he was asked to contribute to the Investigation Discovery documentary without knowing the true subject matter.
“They asked me what I thought of Nick, and the first 10 to 12 seconds, from what I understand, in this documentary are me saying all these wonderful things,” Summers said in a preview clip of the sit-down, which airs Friday. “But they did a bait and switch on me. They ambushed me. They never told me what this documentary was really about. And so they showed me a video of something that I couldn’t believe was on Nickelodeon. And I said, ‘Well, let’s stop the tape right here. What are we doing?’”
Once he learned that the documentary would detail Dan Schneider’s alleged behavior and the toxic environment it spawned at the children’s network, he walked out of the interview.
“I left. So I got a phone call about six weeks ago saying you’re totally out of the show. And I went, ‘Great.’ Then they called me about four weeks ago and said, ‘Well, you’re in it, but you’re only in the first part of it because you talked about the positive stuff of Nickelodeon,’” Summers explained. “What they didn’t tell me — and they lied to me about — was the fact that they put in that other thing where they had the camera on me when they ambushed me.”
“Now we get into a whole situation about who’s unethical,” he further noted.
In addition to his initial positive comments about Nickelodeon, Summers appears later in the doc watching a clip on his phone and reacting to it in real-time, asking, “Did that air on Nickelodeon?” The former host said he never met Schneider because the “iCarly” creator’s era at the network arrived after “Double Dare” ended in 1993.
“I have no idea about any of those things,” Summers concluded. “I mean, I know Kenan [Thompson] from ‘Kenan and Kel’ because we’ve done stuff together. But as far as anything that happened on that show with any of those people, I never met any of them. I didn’t know anybody. But it made it seem like I knew those people.”
TheWrap has reached out to Z100 for comment.
Variety was first to report this news.
