LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Amid the brouhaha about Britney Spears getting slapped, there is another Spears who is making headlines — none other than Britney's sister, Jamie Lynn. But she's in the news for the wrong reasons. According to Alexa Nikolas, who shared the screen with Lynn in ‘Zoey 101’, the Princess of Pop’s younger sister made the set “very toxic”.
During an interview with the YouTube podcast channel H3, Alexa Nikolas recounted the experience of her “pretty bad three years” while shooting the Nickelodeon show. To the show’s host, Ethan Klein, Nikolas said blatantly, “Jamie Lynn Spears just created a very toxic, unhealthy work environment.”
Did Jamie Lynn Spears bully 'Zoey 101' co-star?
Nikolas said that it was probably her “bubbly” personality that Lynn didn’t like. She initially thought Lynn was probably shy about meeting new people, but she realized it was not the case. Soon things escalated to an extent and it turned into bullying. Nikolas said, “It just started to snowball, basically, and then it became bullying where she would just say harsh things to me like, "Why do you smile so much?" You know like this kid bullying s*** basically.” Nikolas further added that at that time it hurt, “But you know, at that time it hurt. When I was a kid.”
While Lynn was 13 and Nikolas 12, they starred together on the show ‘Zoey 101’ where Nikolas’ character was a friend to Lynn’s Zoey. The duo worked together on the show in 2005-2006. Nikolas further said that Lynn “created the culture of the set” as she was the show’s lead, adding “And her not liking me made everyone else kind of feel like, I think, they had to also engage in that type of behavior.”
However, Nikolas lost her patience when Lynn’s world-famous sister, Britney castigated her without giving her the chance to speak. Nikolas recounted meeting the heavily pregnant Britney, “I remember she just started yelling at me, telling me that I was bullying her sister, and I wanted to say something. And I remember my throat just closed. I couldn't even speak, and I tried, and I just started to cry and hyperventilate,” before adding “And [Britney] was like, 'I'm gonna make sure you don't work again."
Terming the confrontation as “f**king scary”, Nikolas said she “puked” after coming out of Lynn’s trailer. She continued by saying that she didn’t get any help from the show’s creators and talked about a particular meeting with Dan Schneider. Recounting her meeting with Schneider, she said, “And here comes Dan Schneider, with his sunglasses. And he looks at me — and I'll never forget this — he goes, 'Now what?'” Nikolas left soon after. Recalling the last few days on the set, she said, “I remember just kind of looking at all the adults [on set]. I remember just looking up at them and just, you know, I didn't matter that much in that situation.”
‘It’s sad to see someone not change after all these years’
This is however, not the first time Nikolas has spoken out against Lynn. In 2022, Nikolas wrote on her Instagram "I recently thought we were fine after she tried to use me in her Zoey 101 music video to make herself look better after I finally came out about what happened to me while on set, being left out once again during the reunion reboot ploy," before adding, "To be honest, it took her a while. I'm guessing the pressure from others made her address the issue. I declined her offer. Why now? But I was happy to get an apology finally. So I forgave her."
When Lynn made a reboot version of the show’s theme song in October 2022, Nikolas was conspicuously missing. She further added that Lynn tried to contact her to send a gift saying, "I have no idea what is going on over there with her but I want absolutely nothing to do with it," and remarked, "Typical move for a bully to play the victim card/gaslight others while straight up lying. I responded to her and said, 'Please do not send me anything and please stop contacting me,'” per E! News.
