Jennette McCurdy

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Jennette McCurdy gave her memoir a title that stops people mid-sentence: I'm Glad My Mom Died. The cover is just as startling. It shows her looking upward while holding a pink urn, with confetti spilling out of the lid. It looks like a party and reads like a confession. McCurdy began working in front of cameras as a child, and audiences knew her mostly through a children's sitcom. Very few knew what her life looked like away from the set. How does a young performer end up celebrating a death? What did the cameras never show? And why would someone with one of television's best-known teenage roles decide to walk away from acting altogether?

  44795374

• 2. Garden Grove

  ›

  Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, in Long Beach, California, is where Jennette McCurdy was born on the 26th of June 1992. She grew up nearby in Garden Grove, in a middle-class family that belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. McCurdy herself left the religion in early adulthood. Her grandparents lived under the same roof, and she had three older brothers.

  Debra McCurdy, born Debra LaBeaf and living from 1957 to 2013, taught all four children at home. When Jennette was between two and three years old, Debra was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through several surgeries, chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. McCurdy says her earliest memories are "very weighted in tragedy" because of that illness.

  Hoarding, by McCurdy's account, took over the house after the diagnosis. She has described the home as "overwhelmed" with clutter. The children slept on Costco trifold gymnastic mats in the living room. Their bedrooms were so stuffed, she says, that you could not tell where the beds were, let alone sleep in them.

  Mark McCurdy, the husband of Debra, worked two jobs to keep the family afloat. Jennette grew up believing he was her biological father. Only after Debra died did she learn that he was not. In her memoir she identifies her biological father as a jazz musician named Andrew. The two have met in person at least once.

  441121280

• 3. Sam Puckett

  ›

  In 2000, at the age of eight, McCurdy made her first television appearance on the adult sketch show Mad TV. Guest roles followed on a long list of series, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Will & Grace, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Medium and Judging Amy. From 2003 to 2005 she popped up on Malcolm in the Middle, and in 2005 she appeared on Zoey 101.

  A feature film arrived in 2003, when she acted in Hollywood Homicide. Two years later she earned a Young Artist Award nomination for guest starring on the medical drama Strong Medicine. She also appeared in a commercial for Sprint Corporation. None of this made her a name children would recognize.

  That changed in 2007 with the Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly, where she played the blunt, tough Sam Puckett across 93 episodes until 2012. The role earned her four Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. In one episode, titled "iTwins", she also played Sam's twin sister Melanie. A 2008 Young Artist Award nomination covered both iCarly and her role as Dory Sorenson in the television movie The Last Day of Summer. A 2009 Teen Choice Award nomination followed, in the Favorite TV Sidekick category.

  Sam was soon everywhere. McCurdy voiced her in the 2009 iCarly video game. She also played Bertha in Fred: The Movie, which grew out of a YouTube series about Fred Figglehorn.

  In 2013, Nickelodeon gave the character her own show. Sam & Cat paired McCurdy with Ariana Grande, who brought back her own iCarly role, Cat Valentine. The two characters become roommates and start a babysitting business. The series premiered on the 8th of June 2013 and produced 35 episodes, and its ending would prove far less cheerful than its premise.

  1415949597

• 4. A Country Blip

  ›

  In June 2008, McCurdy announced she was recording a debut album, and she was not aiming at the pop charts. Her first single, "So Close", came out independently on the 10th of March 2009. On the 19th of May she released a cover of the Amanda Stott song "Homeless Heart". The cover honored her friend Cody Waters, who had died at the age of nine from brain cancer. She had met him through St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and 20% of the proceeds went to the Cody Waters Foundation.

  By mid-2009, both Big Machine Records and Capitol Records Nashville had offered her a deal. She signed with Capitol Nashville. On the 16th of April 2010, clips of several songs went online so fans could vote on her first radio single. "Not That Far Away" won the vote. It reached country radio on the 24th of May 2010 and iTunes on the 1st of June.

  Her debut EP, also titled Not That Far Away, arrived on the 17th of August 2010. A second single, "Generation Love", was released as a digital download on the 22nd of March 2011 and reached radio on the 25th of April. It climbed to number 44 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.

  On the 8th of February 2012, a self-titled second EP went on sale at the clothing retailer Justice. Her self-titled debut album followed on the 5th of June. Soon afterward she said she had left Capitol Nashville because of conflicts with a new series she had been cast in. Looking back in 2022, McCurdy called the whole venture "a much-regretted country music blip".

  424546474

• 5. Her Mother's Shadow

  ›

  "The heartbeat of my life" is how McCurdy describes her mother, in the same breath as calling the relationship abusive. She says she was emotionally and sexually abused by Debra. In an interview with People magazine, she described her mother's moods this way: "My mom's emotions were so erratic that it was like walking a tightrope every day."

  At six years old, McCurdy says, she was pushed into acting. Money was one reason, and the other was that her mother had once wanted to be a performer herself. McCurdy says Debra was "obsessed with making her a star". Before long, the child became the family's main source of income. She has also said she never received all of her earnings as a minor, because her Coogan account was not properly filed.

  Until she was 17, McCurdy says, her mother carried out invasive breast and vaginal exams on her, presented as medical checks or cancer screenings. Debra also never let her shower alone. McCurdy has said this was the hardest part of her book to write.

  Her mother's wishes shaped later career choices too. McCurdy says she agreed to appear in Sam & Cat to please her.

  In June 2011, The Wall Street Journal published McCurdy's article "Off-Camera, My Mom's Fight With Cancer". It laid out in detail how Debra's illness affected the household. It included advice for living with an ill parent. The cancer came back in 2010, and Debra died on the 20th of September 2013, seventeen years after her first diagnosis. McCurdy was 21.

  779125960

• 6. Hunger

  ›

  At age 11, McCurdy says, her mother taught her to restrict calories, and that is when her anorexia began. Bulimia came later. In a March 2019 Huffington Post article, she traced the disorders to her mother and to the entertainment industry around her. That piece was the first time she opened up about them publicly.

  The consequences were physical. McCurdy lost a tooth because repeated vomiting had worn away its enamel with stomach fluids. On another occasion she collapsed from dehydration and passed out on Miranda Cosgrove's bathroom floor. Help only came after her sister-in-law noticed what was happening.

  She wrote that the eating disorder "robbed me of my joy and any amount of free-spiritedness that I had". Alcohol became a second problem, and she says she began drinking heavily shortly before her mother's death. She now describes herself as a recovering alcoholic. By 2022, she considered herself fully recovered from the eating disorders.

  8384858687

• 7. Leaving the Screen

  ›

  The 2014 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards took place without McCurdy, a notable absence for a four-time winner. She later said the network had put her in an "uncomfortable, compromising, unfair situation" and that she had to look out for herself. Nickelodeon placed Sam & Cat on hiatus, first saying the pause was planned. On the 13th of July 2014 it announced the show was cancelled after a single season. McCurdy later told the show Entertainment Pop that she had made up with Grande.

  Her memoir adds details about her time at the network. She describes being photographed in a bikini at a wardrobe fitting. She also describes being encouraged to drink alcohol while underage by a person she calls "the Creator". After Sam & Cat ended, she says, Nickelodeon offered her $300,000 to agree not to discuss her experiences. She turned it down.

  On the 13th of August 2014 she launched What's Next for Sarah?, an online show she wrote, starred in, edited and executive produced. Its lead, Sarah Bronson, is loosely based on McCurdy herself. In 2015 she began starring in the Netflix drama Between. Critics singled her out as "one of the few cast members who can act", yet the show was not renewed for a third season. That same year, a teen comedy called Little Bitches was announced with Virginia Gardner and Kiersey Clemons.

  In August 2016, McCurdy signed a deal with the digital production company Canvas Media Studios to develop projects and draw on her social media following. She also played Claire in the psychological thriller Pet. Then she told her website that she felt ashamed of 90% of her résumé. She decided to quit acting in 2017, writing: "I never got the chance to be cast in a project I was proud to be part of. Now I have a better chance of making things I'm proud of than getting cast in things I'm proud of."

  Afterward she erased much of her online past. She deleted her old posts from Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. She set her past videos and vlogs to private on YouTube and Vimeo.

  McCurdy later explained the decision on the Empty Inside podcast, in a conversation with the actress Anna Faris. She said she had been pushed into acting as a child and had become ashamed of her old roles. Therapy in the late 2010s helped her decide to leave. When iCarly was revived in 2020 for Paramount+, she declined to play Sam Puckett again. The reason, she said, was that the show reminded her of her mother's abuse.

  1719232870

• 8. Pages and Frames

  ›

  The Wall Street Journal first gave McCurdy a byline in 2011, when she began writing a series of articles for the paper. Eight pieces ran in all, covering topics from Shirley Temple to body shaming, and a corporate culture she sees as smoke and mirrors. She also wrote for Seventeen magazine.

  In 2018 she wrote and directed her first short film, Kenny, a dramedy inspired by her mother's death. Its crew was entirely female. The Hollywood Reporter and Short of the Week both featured it. Three more shorts followed, all written and directed by her: The Grave, The McCurdys, which is semi-autobiographical and drawn from her childhood, and Strong Independent Women, which deals with eating disorders. In late 2018 she said she hoped to direct more films.

  By 2020, McCurdy was performing a one-woman tragicomedy called I'm Glad My Mom Died in theaters in Los Angeles and New York. The COVID-19 pandemic forced her to pause the show. She resumed performing it in Los Angeles in September 2021. In July 2020 she posted a video of herself singing about starting a podcast, and Empty Inside launched later that year. In September 2023 she began hosting a second podcast, Hard Feelings.

  Simon & Schuster published the book version of I'm Glad My Mom Died on the 9th of August 2022. It held the number one spot on The New York Times Best Seller list for eight weeks. Her success led her to sign a two-book deal with Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

  On the 1st of July 2025, it was announced that McCurdy would adapt the memoir into a television series of the same name. She is a showrunner alongside Ari Katcher, and Jennifer Aniston is set to star. Then, on the 20th of January 2026, Ballantine released Half His Age, her debut novel and second book.

  3435446364