A woman came to TikTok to expose the Quiet on Set documentary for using content of herself and a former child actor after denying permission to the filmmakers.
Chelsea Fagan (@faganchelsea) has reached over 2.4 million views and 267,000 likes on her video by Saturday. She captioned her video telling viewers, “Not using names out of respect, but hopefully you get the point.”
To start her video, Chelsea sternly disclaims, “I did not want to make this video, and in fact, as of this morning have spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to attempt to come to a resolution that did not involve me making this video, but so far that’s gotten me basically nowhere, so here we are.”
Next she adds, “As I continue to receive dozens of messages about this every single day, I would like to finally say something on the issue and then never talk about it again.”
Chelsea explains how if you have seen her before and have watched the documentary that you have “most certainly noticed that I briefly feature in it.”
She clarifies how she was not a subject of the documentary, but was featured through a clip of an interview she had conducted with a former child actor a few years prior.
For context, Chelsea says she had interviewed this child actor on her show “primarily to talk about the finances of child stardom.”
“As my podcast is focused on money,” she adds. “But, at a few points in the conversation, the former child actor did touch on a few of the subjects that are covered in the documentary.”
Then Chelsea informs the audience that in September she was approached by a production company about a then, “unnamed documentary about child actors.” The company was looking to license some of the content from Chelsea’s interview.
“We initially responded with our standard response when we receive licensing requests,” she explains, “but upon looking at the vague nature of the documentary that they were describing and the extremely sensitive nature of what they were looking to clip, I wanted to investigate further.”
First Chelsea says she scheduled a call with the production company, and also reached out to the former child actor via email asking if they would “ever be OK with having licensed.”
“And more importantly, flagging that there was a production company going around and looking for clips of them talking about this subject on the record,” she adds.
On the call with the production company, Chelsea says they were very lax about the details surrounding the documentary and “wouldn’t give me a straight answer as to whether or not they had already reached out directly to the child star and been declined for an interview.”
“Which I suspected was the case,” she adds.
In the meantime, Chelesa says she had not heard back from the child actor in question.
Chelsea says she sent an email to the production company the same month saying that they “decline to have any portion of this interview used in the documentary.”
She also adds that as far as she can tell, “this former child has declined to participate,” thus making the use of her content, “highly unethical on her behalf.”
After sending this email, Chelsea says she did hear back from the representative of the former child actor saying that they “unequivocally did not consent to have that content used in this documentary.”
“So it was clearly the right call,” Chelsea says.
“Imagine my surprise when in March of this year, I opened my DMSs to dozens of people everyday telling me about me being in this documentary.”
“Not only was this content used against our will and despite our explicit refusal, we were never informed that it would be included,” she adds. “We immediately pursued legal channels to demand that they remove this clip from the documentary.”
Chelsea says that thus far all of her efforts have been “completely unsuccessful.”
Next she addresses that she understands how widely popular “exposes and documentaries like this are,” and that she is “not judging anyone for watching them.” Although, “I do think it’s important that we understand what actually goes into making them,” she says. “Especially when the subject of this documentary is the exploitation of these very real human beings.”
“It’s important people are aware of how much exploitation and dishonesty goes into making it.”
Before ending her video Chelsea says, “I am frankly disgusted to be associated with this … so the least I can do with that energy is hopefully channel it into people being a little bit more discerning about the media they consume.”
@faganchelsea Not using names out of respect, but hopefully you get the point. #quietonset #quietonsetdocumentary #childactors ♬ original sound – faganchelsea
A comment under Chelsea’s video with over 29,000 likes says, “the point of the show is to show exploitation essentially… and they exploited people to do it??? What….”
“It’s wild that a series about the shadiness of television productions itself engaged in high degrees of shadiness,” another said.
One adds, “this is the second time i’ve seen someone say they didn’t consent to be a part of it… makes me nervous about the rest of the people involved.”
“There’s going to have to be a documentary about this documentary,” another says.
One comment addressed, “Given this and Marc Summers recent comments I’m starting to really not like the producers of this documentary even though I think it’s important what they’ve brought to light.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Chelsea via TikTok direct message, and HBO and Maxine Productions, which produced the documentary, via email.
