Read Online Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age by Mathew Klickstein - Free Book Online

wouldn’t be the worst thing to go down. There are other roles I’ve done that are more recent and more fresh in people’s minds. They would be just as funny to have as my epitaph. I’m kinda grateful to have this character.
    KENAN THOMPSON: I got lucky because I was named after myself for my entire Nickelodeon career. It’s very clearly me and not necessarily a super-stretch outside of my character. I’ve been lucky that I’ve never really had to fight that. The only thing I’m still attached to when people see me is a “Kenan and Kel” thing. But that’s not a bad thing, because I’m still myself.
    MICHAEL BOWER: A few years later, you meet fans and they constantly call you that name and they have no respect for you at all after you introduce yourself as a human being. That’s when it gets a little annoying. Being typecast is an industry standard. I don’t like it, but now that I’m producing, that’s how they do it!
    JOE O’CONNOR: I know a show like
Clarissa
would never go on now. People on the show wouldn’t be pretty enough. I have seven-year-old twins, and when we turn on some Disney and Nickelodeon shows, the girls are gorgeous, the boys are really handsome, and the shows are far more wink-and-nod. Times have changed. Selling habits have changed. Everybody’s upped the ante a little.
    ADAM WEISSMAN: There’s more responsibility on a show like
Hannah Montana
.
Hannah
, in particular, was much more than a show. It was a
brand
. You had a very lucrative concert component to it, she represented a lot of things to a lot of girls, and so there was a responsibility to maintain this multibillion-dollar brand . . . which is something you wouldn’t have on a show like
Welcome Freshmen
, basically done under the radar.
    ROGER PRICE: I did not let Alanis Morissette sing on
You Can’t Do That on Television
. If I did have the kids sing, there was a real danger one or more of them would become a pop star—à la Justin Bieber—as had happened with some British kids in my stable. And that creates all manner of problems, not least of which is security and crowd control . . . and record companies and concerts and managers. And it all takes away their time and attention from the TV series. Probably the best thing I did for Alanis was not to have her sing on the show.
    JOANNA GARCIA: I’ve always said that it’s kind of our duty as young people in a position where we are exposed on a larger scale to a lot of other young people to be a great role model. But now it’s almost frightening how much pressure is put on them. I was a working actor in television but was still able to make my mistakes in private and do stupid things without being under the scrutiny of paparazzi constantly following me. It’s just a different world now.
    LARISA OLEYNIK: I wasn’t responsible for selling backpacks. I didn’t have a side career as a pop star. These kids now are doing so much. And I mean, more power to them. I was just not that ambitious. That’s the difference I see, because there’s so much more responsibility now. And so much more
publicity
. But that’s just the world now. It’s funny to be thirty now, isn’t it? It’s funny that we can actually witness these changes; that we can recognize that we are of an older generation that has passed. That’s something I don’t think I would have been prepared for as a twelve-year-old. Really, hats off to these kids who are doing
so much
right now. I just showed up to work and that was it.

VANESSA LINDORES: Don’t know. Never really cared much.
    KEVIN KUBUSHESKIE: Depending on who worked the props, the recipe varied. I think it was mainly gelatin, food coloring, oatmeal, and eventually some shampoo.
    JUSTIN CAMMY: Green slime is made out of Cream of Wheat, green food coloring, and Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. And water. It was fun to be there on set the days they were making it, because they had to get the consistency exactly right. Sometimes it was too watery;