Jennette McCurdy's experience on Nickelodeon's iCarly

The iCarly star’s painful, funny memoir pivots around her life as an unwilling, mistreated child actor and daughter.

The iCarly star’s painful, funny memoir pivots around her life as an unwilling, mistreated child actor and daughter.

iCarly star Jennette McCurdy's book I'm Glad My Mom Died isn't available in Australia until September 20 (Simon & Schuster, $39.99), but you can get it early if you're happy to sacrifice the hardcover.

You can get it right now on Kindle for $21.99. 

Review:

“It’s strange how we always give big news to loved ones in a coma. As if a coma is just a thing that happens from a lack of something to be excited about in your life.”

Jennette McCurdy opens her debut memoir at the hospital bedside of her comatose, dying mother, Debra. She is waiting to share her “big news.” Her older brothers take their turn — one is relocating, the other is getting married — and leave. Jennette and her mother are alone, and the key for the book is set: “Mommy, I am so skinny right now. I’m finally down to 89 pounds.” 

I’m Glad My Mom Died is a painful, funny book that pivots around the iCarly star’s career as an unwilling child actor, her battle with anorexia, and her strained relationship with her overbearing mother.

Through sharp, short vignettes, Jennette expands on her personal trauma, extending from her early childhood through to her 20s.

Jennette McCurdy's debut memoir, 'I'm Glad My Mom Died', is out now.

Initially conceived as a one-woman comedy show, the book has soared to the top of Amazon’s best sellers list, with all physical copies sold out. It’s still available on Kindle, or if audiobooks are more your style — Jennette’s reading is sublime: acerbic, and dry (hot tip: her podcast “Empty Inside” is well worth your time) — we can’t think of a better way to whittle away a lazy Sunday. S0 If you’re tempted, clear your schedule and read on for our key takeaways. 

Her emotionally and physically abusive adolescence

Jennette’s upbringing was unorthodox. She was raised in a Mormon, working-class house in Orange County, California, where she lived with her parents, grandparents, and three older brothers (the eldest was 15 years Jennette’s senior). The environment was stifling, and something was deeply off.

Debra, was a chronic hoarder. So much so that she slept with the children on a tri-fold gymnastics pad in the living room.

She was also obsessed with her status as a stage 4 breast cancer survivor.

“Mom reminisces about cancer the way most people reminisce about vacations,” Jennette writes. Recalling that every Sunday, after church, the family would congregate around the television to rewatch a video Debra made after finding out about her diagnosis. 

“The fragility of mums life is the centre of mine.”

Debra used the guilt of cancer as means to domineer her children. In a harrowing anecdote, Jennette writes that she was forced to shower with her mother, well into her adolescence. And that whilst administering her showers, she would routinely be subjected to breast and vaginal exams (to check for cancer). On occasion, when her mother was low on time, Jennette and her teenage brother would have to shower together. 

She never wanted to act

Jennette admits that she never wanted to act, but felt beholden to do so because she was guilt-tripped into it by her mother. “I want to give you the life I never had, I want to give you the life I deserved, the life my parents never let me had," she recalls her mother saying. “So what do you say, do you want to act? Do you want to be mommy’s little actress?”

Disordered eating

Jennette, in the memoir, writes that at age 11, her mother taught her disordered eating so that she could delay puberty and continue to land child roles to financially support her family. 

Together they both ate a maximum of 1000 calories a day - on occasion, to impress her mother, she would only eat half her meals, restricting herself to 500 calories. Debra weighed her every Sunday, measured her thighs, and suggested coffee as an appetite suppressant - despite it being forbidden in the Mormon religion. 

By the time she reached her teenage years, the disordered eating had advanced into anorexia, which later turned into binge eating and bulimia. 

Nickelodeon offered her $300,000 in hush money

We’re all on the same page regarding those misconduct allegations shrouding Nickelodeon, right? If not, that’s between you and Dr. Google. The book tactically navigates the alleged abuse Jennette experiences, without risking a death march to a lawsuit. She does not mention her alleged abuser by name, choosing to refer to him only as “The Creator.” 

There’s an uncomfortable scene that takes place in the dressing room of the iCarly set, where Jennette, crippled by anorexia, is forced to take photos trying on bikinis. “I don’t want to come out from behind the curtain,” she writes. “I hate this feeling. The feeling of so much of my body being exposed. It feels sexual to me. I’m ashamed.” She attempts to persuade wardrobe into letting her wear a one-piece and board shorts. “The Creator explicitly asked for bikinis.”

Still from iCarly.

In another anecdote, the actress, then 18, is taken out to dinner by The Creator, where she is encouraged to drink alcohol for the first time. The Creator proceeds to massage her shoulders in an inappropriate manner,  “My shoulders do have a lot of knots in them, but I don’t want The Creator to be the one rubbing them out. I want to say something, to tell him to stop, but I’m so scared of offending him.”

Jennette also details she was allegedly offered her $300,000 in “hush money” in exchange for never talking “publicly about your experience at Nickelodeon”, specifically experiences “related to The Creator.” 

She rejected the offer, despite her team telling her it was “free money”.

“No it’s not. This isn’t free money. This feels to me like hush money…I’m not taking hush money.”

Life ain't Grande

Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande in Sam & Cat. Photo: Nickelodeon.

Jealousy is hard to reckon with, and harder to admit to. Jennette comes face to face with the green-eyed monster, in a chapter where she delves into her frayed relationship with Ariana Grande, her co-star on the iCarly and Victorious spinoff series, Sam & Cat.

At the time, Grande’s fledgling pop star career was taking off. She “regularly” missed filming “to go sing at award shows, record new songs, and do press for her upcoming album” whilst Jennette was left to “angrily hold down the fort.”

She writes that she had booked two features during the filming of the show (that was cancelled after one season), which she had to turn down because the team refused to write her out of the episodes, all the while Grande was allowed to skip filming to focus on music.

“The week where I was told Ariana would not be here at all, and that they would write around her absence this episode by having her character be locked in a box. Are you. Kidding me,” Jennette writes. “So I have to turn down movies while Ariana’s off whistle-toning at the Billboard Music Awards? Fuck. This.”

“I’m pissed about it. And I’m pissed at her. Jealous of her.”

She continues, “Ariana is at the stage in her career where she’s popping up on every 30 Under 30 list that exists. And I’m at the stage in my career where my team is excited that I’m the new face of Rebecca Bonbon, a tween clothing line featuring a cat with her tongue sticking out. Sold exclusively at Walmart. And I frequently make the mistake of comparing my career to Ariana’s. I can’t help it. I’m constantly in the same environment as her, and she doesn’t exactly try to hide her successes.”

The straw that broke the camels back? When Jennette learned that Ariana had spent “the previous evening playing charades at Tom Hanks’ house.”

“That was the moment I broke,” Jennette writes.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. Music performances and magazine covers… whatever, I’ll get over it. But playing a family game at national treasure, two-time Academy Award–winner and six-time nominee Tom Hanks’s house? I’m done.”

If this has raised any issues for you, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.