Miranda Said She Was In The Dark About Jennette's Struggles During iCarly
"When you're young, you're so in your own head."
Jennette McCurdy is done staying silent about the darkness that went on behind the scenes at Nickelodeon, and her revelations are even shocking to her iCarly co-star, Miranda Cosgrove. After some particularly damning excerpts from McCurdy’s new memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, were published, Cosgrove admitted she was surprised by what McCurdy went through. Honestly, McCurdy’s stories about her iCarly days are a lot to process, so it’s no wonder Cosgrove’s response underlined her shock.
With a title like I’m Glad My Mom Died, it’s clear from the jump that McCurdy’s memoir isn’t going to hold anything back. Ahead of its Aug. 9 release, Vanity Fair published a few excerpts from the tell-all on Aug. 5, all of which revolved around McCurdy’s behind-the-scenes struggles working as a Nickelodeon star. As a teenager, McCurdy starred in the hit Nick series iCarly from 2007 to 2012, and then proceeded to reprise her character in the one-season spinoff Sam & Cat in 2013. Since then, McCurdy has been vocal about putting her acting career in her past, and her new memoir definitely offers some insight into why that might be.
The Vanity Fair excerpts focus on the alleged abuse McCurdy suffered at the hands of a man she refers to as “The Creator.” In her writing, McCurdy details an uncomfortable dinner with The Creator, which involved him pressuring her to drink alcohol underage and giving her an unwanted massage. She also claims The Creator was eventually barred from being on set with any of the actors due to accusations of emotional abuse, and that when Sam & Cat was canceled, Nickelodeon offered her $300,000 to not speak about her experiences with him. McCurdy turned down the alleged hush money, making her explosive memoir possible.
The new excerpts add even more layers to previous entries of I’m Glad My Mom Died published in both The New York Times and The Washington Post in the weeks leading up to the memoir’s release. In those passages, McCurdy claimed Nickelodeon allowed her Sam & Cat co-star Ariana Grande to pursue more projects outside of the network than herself, and how her opportunistic mother’s abuse ultimately made her hate acting. (According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, a representative for Nickelodeon declined to comment. Vanity Fair also reached out to Nickelodeon for comment.)
Although McCurdy wrote that those final years at Nickelodeon were dark for everyone, her iCarly co-star Miranda Cosgrove didn’t know the full extent of McCurdy’s struggles at the time. “When you’re young, you’re so in your own head,” Cosgrove told The New York Times. “You can’t imagine that people around you are having much harder struggles. You don’t expect things like that from the person in the room who’s making everyone laugh.”
You can read all of McCurdy’s brutally honest revelations in I’m Glad My Mom Died, which hits shelves on Aug. 9.
