Jennette McCurdy shares the stories behind memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died”

[Music] on the outside i was doing a lot of the performing the tap dancing of like the the smile and the showing up and landing on my mark and i'm gonna just do what i need to do and be this you know happy-go-lucky nickelodeon kid my name is samantha puckett i'm from seattle and i love fried chicken but inside it was hurting it was painful it was angry i felt unsupported you pull back the curtain on child stardom it is not a pretty picture not as i see it no at just 15 jeanette mccurdy was one of the most recognizable child stars on television playing sam puckett in nickelodeon's hit show icarly where'd my straw go here to her millions of fans she was known as the funny bff but she says behind that bubbly on-screen persona nothing about her real life was funny for you what were the pitfalls of child fame you're playing an adults game you're in an adult's world and you don't recognize that you're incapable of being on that level but you are confused and you think that you are and i think it really leads to stunted personal development her personal struggles eventually prompting her to abandon acting altogether you say quite frankly that this was never your dream stardom was never your dream whose dream was it my mom's i think she wanted me to have a better life than she had but i also think her approach was very unhealthy and informed by her own lack of self-work and she lived vicariously through me jeanette had her first audition at age six encouraged by her late mom deborah their mother-daughter bond deeply disordered and chaotic she says her family struggled financially over time like so many other child stars her acting paid the bills it felt like a lot of pressure and then i think my mom saw my career as a way out of that life of that way of living of that constant grind how chaotic was that childhood home you describe it with one line that stuck with me that the air in the house felt like a held breath it was really complicated my mom also had cancer when i was two years old it was the first time she was diagnosed so not only was it chaotic because of the abuse that was happening and my mom's violent and erratic unstable behavior but also because we all lived in fear of her cancer coming back that volatile relationship is at the center of jeannette's dark and deeply personal memoir i'm glad my mom died what made you pick that i think i earned that title through the writing of the book but i wanted it to be something that would grab people's attention and get them to pick up the book and then hopefully learn by the end of it why i have chosen that title from the tender age of 11 she says her mother taught her the dangerous habit of calorie restriction which would turn into years of eating disorders in many ways your mother tried to keep you a child yeah i think my mom wanted to keep me as controllable as possible i think she really wanted to have her influence on me and me growing up was a threat to that the key to that was calorie restriction absolutely i think my mom encouraged and conditioned my anorexia because both she thought that it would in some ways help my career and also because it served her goal of keeping me young and under her influence the book reveals dark episodes of her childhood that for years jeanette says she blocked out she describes how her mother would give her showers and touch her invasively until she was a teenager she referred to them as medical exams on your private parts yes this was the hardest part of the book for me to write about it was a really emotional experience i laughed during the writing of it and then i cried a lot after i after i wrote that vignette you talk about basically having out-of-body associations out-of-body experiences when this is happening to you yeah what do you think was going on i've tried to understand and that didn't lead me anywhere productive i would just spin my wheels trying to understand my mom's motives this continued until you were 17. yeah and you describe in the book that you felt violated yes i absolutely felt violated and eventually accepting that was the most i think integral piece to my own healing and recovery at the height of her stardom she landed a spin-off series sam and cat starring alongside future pop star ariana grande she writes about tensions on the set see what you said say it again one more time i said i'm really smart you literally wrote i frequently made the mistake of comparing my career to ariana's yeah and being jealous of everything jealous of her childhood jealous of a music career that you didn't even want sure i was jealous specifically that she played charades with tom hanks that's what got me charades with tom hanks how dare she i know but i was so young at the time and i think it's really hard to not compare yourself to somebody at that age when you're in an environment around them all the time so i made that mistake repeatedly and [Music] i'm i'm i'm glad to be at a place now where i wouldn't trade positions with somebody as the show was airing her mother died of cancer jeannette says her life was spinning out of control anorexia morphing into bulimia and alcohol abuse i was never aiming for bulimia i was attempting to have anorexia but i couldn't keep it up without my mom so then that would lead to i'd starve myself for so long and then i'd binge and then i'd purge because i i hated the feeling of fullness hated it it would take jeanette years to seek proper help and start therapy to begin grappling with her trauma i couldn't initially accept the idea that my mother was abusive toward me because my whole way of life my whole way of going through the world was i was operating through this lens of my mom wants what's best for me even after she died i'm nothing without my mom i can't do anything without my mom i'm incapable i'm incompetent what would mom want what would mom think what does mom need that accepting that she was abusive would have meant reframing my entire life and that felt impossible i couldn't go near that for a long time jeannette says that building a new life without her mom began with a stunning decision to leave acting behind why quit acting it was important for my recovery at the time it represented my mom leaving vicariously through me it represented something that my mom wanted that i didn't want so it was important for me to step away in a very definitive way and really just focus on completely on healing myself reflecting back on her career jeanette's critical of the hollywood machine and the world she was exposed to at such a young age in her book she writes that after sam and cat was canceled nickelodeon offered her a 300 000 thank you gift if she agreed to never speak publicly about her experience at the network specifically with a man she refers to as the creator who on one occasion she says encouraged her to drink while she was still underaged and gave her a shoulder massage in response nickelodeon telling abc news we have no reportable response other than a no comment at this time i just said no it's not happening that sounds like hush money to me not doing it not taking it and then i do remember leaning against i think i talk about this in the book but i lean against my bed and i'm like oh shoot i could have put my nieces through college like that was some good money but i am ultimately proud of of my decision there um wherever it came from even if it was informed by self-righteousness i think that uh i think i did something that was really hard to do oh my god it makes emotional i'm proud of myself why why proud of yourself i think i've chosen a path of integrity and it hasn't always been easy now 30 jeanette says she's recovered from years of eating disorders and found a sense of balance for the first time in her life what's your body image now and what's your relationship to food like and how do you sort of go about your day i'm glad you asked this because when people talk about eating disorder recovery they talk about it being such an ongoing process and something you deal with every single day for the rest of your life and it's always a battle and i think that kind of language it doesn't help motivate i'm at a place now where i don't obsess about food at all i haven't engaged in any sort of disordered eating behavior for years i'm really proud of that jeanette says healing also comes through in her riding she's working on a novel and a collection of essays and while she sees herself as a writer she hasn't completely ruled out a return to acting i just wish i could have shown my 20 year old self me now i would have known what i was aiming for i would have had something to hope for something to be encouraged about i didn't have that what would you have told your 20 year old self look at me now baby you're going to be fine kid i probably would have said hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 8,691,482

Keywords: ABC, Jennette, McCurdy, News, Nightline, TV, Television, actresses, mom, mother, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-88181584, shows

Id: hkqXK7nsvW0

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Responsible_Pin2939]

She looks like she’s seen some shit

[u/eightballthelawyer]

i’m reading the book rn and it’s really well written. it’s absolutely heartbreaking )-:

[u/Electrical-Flow-7335]

She seems a little too put together. But, surprised by her eloquence. Big of her to admit her mistakes with Grande. Thats cool.

[u/superglower]

I am reading it. I am not even a third of the way through and feel so terrible for her

[u/[deleted]]

there is a psyop/viral marketing campaign surrounding this book. first there was a thread on /lit/, and now this obvious shill post on redscarepod. im sure that in all adjacent communities across the web, people r being payed to post about this book

[u/[deleted]]

this whole thing almost feels like the entertainment industry has now found a way to keep the gravy train going with child stars who flare out because of all the shit the industry did to them.

[u/[deleted]]

She has Liz franczak energy

[u/babyindacorner]

I like her tbh, she seems like she would be fun to smoke a blunt with

[u/jtvotd]

i work at a bookstore and got an advanced copy, i finished it last week and it was crazy and so sad to read, she has been through a lot. definitely a good read