Bullied 101: Starring Alexa Nikolas
When I was in drama club back in high school, the people that I worked with were nice to me, respected me, and they were good friends to me. That’s the way it’s supposed to be when you have child actors working together, it’s supposed to be an opportunity to meet new people, make new friends, and create positive life-long memories together. However, what if the exact opposite happens wherein your friends are your enemies, and your life-long positive memories are replaced with life-long childhood trauma? Hence, we have the case of former child star Alexa Nikolas from the Nickelodeon hit series Zoey 101. Alexa was on Zoey 101 for one season, and when I found out why I was shocked and heartbroken. Here are my thoughts about Alexa Nikolas’s story.
In a Thursday episode of the H3 podcast, Alexa explained to Ethan Klein that she worked in a toxic environment on Zoey 101 wherein she was bullied by her former co-star Jamie Lynn Spears. According to Alexa, she “just wanted to be friends with everybody,” but there would be no success when it came to reaching out to Jamie. Jamie would allegedly give Alexa “the cold shoulder”, and the bullying had slowly escalated to the point where there was no interaction between the two of them.
“She wouldn’t even respond to me,” Alexa stated according to Page Six. “And then it became bullying where she would just say harsh things to me like, ‘Why do you smile so much?’” Alexa also stated that while the alleged comments were known to be “kid bullying s–t,” they were still hurtful at the time. My heart broke for her because I couldn’t believe that she was being treated so horribly by her fellow co-star, especially since she did nothing wrong and just wanted to be her friend.
It’s so heartbreaking to deal with something like this at such a young age because some people in life will be mean to you for no reason, but especially when you’re as young as 12-years-old you think that it’s you’re fault and that you did something wrong to deserve it. No one deserves to be treated this way, Alexa didn’t deserve to be treated this way, but unfortunately this is a historical part of our culture where people hurt people possibly because they are hurt themselves.
According to Alexa, the bullying continued to get worse as Jamie had other cast members feel like they had to participate in the bullying. This would include former co-star Victoria Justice as well as Kristin Herrera who was once part of the Zoey 101 cast as well. “Not only did she specifically call out Victoria Justice for also “bullying” her, but Nikolas hinted that Kristin Herrera, who played Dana Cruz for a single season, was “let go” after the alleged tormenting became “really bad.”” Page Six writer Riley Cardoza reported. “Nikolas alleged that Herrera, 34, pushed her “into a rock at one point,” saying, “It was not a good time.””
This really made me angry because now physical assault was being involved, and the whole time I’m thinking, “Dan Schneider, where are you? Why aren’t you taking control of the situation? I understand that you’re not their parent or babysitter, but these children were still your responsibility. It was still your responsibility to make sure that your cast members were safe and getting along well, yet they clearly weren’t. How did you let this go on for as long as it was, and how were you not more actively involved?”
It makes me think about the kids at school who get bullied by their peers, and yet the teachers and principal do little to nothing to get involved until it becomes too little too late when there’s either an active school shooting taking place, or the bullied victim ends up taking their own life. It’s a tragic situation that comes under the simple notion that some people are negligent, and they’re so involved in their own lives that everything else becomes invisible.
Alexa also told Ethan Klein that Jaime Lynn Spears’s sister Britney once yelled at her in a trailer on set, but since then Britney has reached out to Alexa apologizing for the incident saying, “I apologize for my ignorance for yelling at you when I obviously had no idea what was really going on !!!” Britney stated in a tweet. “I … didn’t know how incredibly good my family was with the ACTING LANGUAGE!!!” I was happy to hear that Britney had reached out to Nikola with this tweet, because it shows that at least someone cares about trying to make things right with Alexa.
When Alexa first became a cast member of Zoey 101, I’m sure her original thought was that she was going to be in this for the long haul, she was going to make so many new friends, and that this was going to be one of the best experiences of her life. Instead, it became this awful nightmare where she was getting bullied to the point where she lasted one season. So having at least one person reach out to Alexa and apologize for what happened, I think is one of the best things that could come from the situation.
Finally, I read this comment at the end of the Page Six article and anonymous individual stated this, “Why do people wait 20 years to expose bullying, abuse, I get the timeline for abuse because you can only come forward when you are ready but bullying, come on every kid has been bullied in school at one time or another, stop trying to be relevant, move on.” I think this is an incredibly insensitive thing to say about someone who’s been through trauma as a child. Alexa had gone through many things she didn’t deserve to go through. To come out on the other side stronger is something to admire not criticize.