Revisiting the Racist Side of Amanda Bynes When She Repeatedly Spit at her Black Co-Star

A former child actress shares her toxic and racist experience while filming on Amanda Bynes’s show, The Amanda Show.

In the most recent episode of the docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, Raquel Lee Bolleau, who appeared in three seasons of the Nickelodeon sketch comedy series, describes an incident that happened while filming a skit titled The Literals. Amanda Bynes reportedly had to spit out the liquid from her lips throughout the act. But, Bolleau said that throughout the sketch’s filming, Bynes would constantly spit in her face directly even though nobody asked her to do so, Decider reported.

In a clip from The Literals, which features Bynes, Bolleau, and another actress, Bynes spits lemon water directly in the direction of her co-stars. “Everybody thought it was so funny. Everybody’s laughing, but I did not find it funny,” Bolleau opened up in the episode of the docuseries. “The third time, I was infuriated.”

The actor continued, “The third time I was infuriated. Like, I was so mad that the director hurried and put me on the side of the set and was like, ‘Listen, Raquel. Breathe in. Breathe out. She’s the star of the show.” Bolleau explained that the director told her, “Don’t make too much of a problem. I’m going to ask [Bynes] not to spit in your face. But you have to keep your cool.”

She claims that during the third spit-take, a director hurried her off the set and reminded her that Bynes was the main attraction. Bolleau shared how, as a young Black girl, she felt incredibly trapped. “Here I am, a young Black girl behind the stage feeling humiliated,” Bolleau, 37, told Rolling Stone. “Every time she spit in my face, they had to reset my makeup, reset my hair every time because she was taking a gulp of water and spitting it out in my face and I could not take it anymore.”

Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Jason Merritt

The new docuseries delves into the toxic culture that surrounded several renowned Nickelodeon shows from the late 1990s and early 2000s. It debuted on Investigation Discovery and is currently available for streaming on Max and Discovery+. After the first four episodes of the series were a huge hit, the network produced a fifth episode titled Breaking the Silence that featured previously unreleased material and brand-new interviews with Drake Bell, Giovonnie Samuels, Bryan Hearne, and Shane Lyons.

When Hearne and his mother Tracey Brown were asked to respond to Bolleau’s account, Brown labeled the event as “racist,” pointing out that Bolleau was one of the few Black actors on The Amanda Show. Hearne said, “It hit me really hard,” says Bryan. “To just be told you don’t matter in that moment you’re being spit on? And it’s like, this person matters more than you.”

Editors Note: This article was originally published eight months ago.