Fans Fear Disgraced Nickelodeon Producer Dan Schneider Fathered Jamie Lynn Spears's Daughter After Seeing Comparison Photos
The list of allegations against Schneider is a mile long, & this one may be the worst of them all.
jamielynnspears / Instagram; Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com; Dan Schneider / Facebook Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider is the man behind some of the children's network's most beloved kids' sitcoms of the 90s and 2000s, like "Drake & Josh," "iCarly" and "Victorious."
But nowadays, he's probably better known as the man behind a raft of horrifying allegations of inappropriate conduct toward his then-underage female stars. As one of those stars, Amanda Bynes has resurfaced in the news amid her recent struggles with mental health. So has an old theory that may be the most damning allegation against Schneider of them all.
Fans think Dan Schneider is the father of Jamie Lynn Spears' first baby Maddie.
The rumor goes way back, all the way to when Jamie Lynn Spears, 31, announced her pregnancy with her first child, Maddie Briann, 14, in 2007 at the age of just 16.
Schneider created "Zoey 101" launching Jamie Lynn Spears' career to new heights but was canceled after her pregnancy was announced.
The show, which premiered on Nickelodeon in 2005, made Jamie Lynn Spears, kid sister of pop icon Britney Spears, a star in her own right. Spears' teen pregnancy was a shocking announcement at the time — even her mother, Lynn Spears, expressed surprise at the news in media comments.
Spears has always maintained that her boyfriend at the time, Casey Aldridge, is Maddie's father, but fans have long suspected that was a cover-up of Schneider's predatory behavior.
Some fans have suggested that Aldridge was paid off by the Spears family to claim to be Maddie's father, either to avoid a sexual assault scandal, to ward off legal action from Schneider or Nickelodeon, or at the behest of Schneider himself.
Fans have also pointed out what they see as an uncanny resemblance between Maddie and the producer as evidence that Dan Schneider is the father of Jamie Lynn Spears' first baby and that he groomed and assaulted Spears.
Rumors claim that the theory was part of a wider cover-up of Schneider's molestations and assaults of several Nickelodeon stars.
The rumor that Dan Schneider is the father of Jamie Lynn Spears' first baby first surfaced in a 2007 blind item in the long-running Hollywood gossip blog "Crazy Days and Nights," which claimed Spears' pregnancy had caused Nickelodeon brass to "have a heart attack because they really don't need any more scandals."
The blind item went on to claim that "one of the producers...is the one who knocked her up," and that "new boyfriends are being lined up as we speak" to cover up the scandal.
"Crazy Days and Nights" was such a credible source for supposedly inside info on Hollywood at the time that the blog had a well-known celebrity following, and many celebrities were rumored to have secret burner accounts with which they commented on the blog's stories.
One such celebrity was alleged to be the "Iron Man" star Robert Downey Jr., whom many believe commented on the Schneider-Spears blind item at the time.
The account that was supposedly Downey Jr.'s referred to Schneider as a "monster" and claimed to know for a fact he fathered Spears' child and that Nickelodeon and parent company Viacom had paid for Schneider's lawyers to cover up this and several other scandals.
Dan Schneider has since been accused of predatory sexual behavior against Nickelodeon stars like Jennette McCurdy, Amanda Bynes, and Alexa Nikolas.
While Spears has kept quiet about Schneider except to praise him, her former Nickelodeon colleagues have not been so magnanimous. Her "Zoey 101" costar Alexa Nikolas has accused Schneider of paying Nickelodeon actresses for photographs of their feet and watching her change in her dressing room when she was as young as 12.
Former Nickelodeon star Jennette McCurdy has not been quite as direct as Nikolas, but in an unedited version of her recent memoir "I'm Glad My Mom Died," McCurdy named a producer named "Dan" as the man who photographed her in a bikini and tried to get her intoxicated, among other accusations, while she worked on his shows "iCarly" and "Sam & Cat."
Many fans also believe sexual predation by Schneider against Amanda Bynes, including an incident in which he was filmed in a hot tub with her, is what led to Bynes' mental breakdown in the 2010s and her subsequent years of mental health struggles.
Bynes' most recent struggle came in March 2023 when she called 911 for help with a psychotic episode.
For her part, Spears has refused to comment on any of the allegations against Schneider, including in her 2022 memoir "Things I Should Have Said," in which she praised him as "the driving force" who championed her casting on "Zoey 101."
And while Schneider has mostly disappeared from the limelight amid the allegation against him, the show he created for Spears lives on.
It is being rebooted, with Spears in the starring role, as "Zoey 102," with production launching in Wilmington, North Carolina in January 2023. Schneider is not involved in the reboot.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.