“I’m Glad My Mom Died:” Jennette McCurdy on Her New Memoir

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Well, the dark side of fame and celebrity is a subject our next guest knows very well. Jennette McCurdy was a child actor in Nickelodeon shows, including “iCarly” and “Sam and Cat,” starring alongside Ariana Grande. But in a new memoir, she opens up about the difficulty she faced from eating disorders and addiction, to a troubled relationship with her mother. In fact, the biting title of her new book is, “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” She explained why in this brink (ph) conversation with Michel Martin.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Jennette McCurdy, thank you so much for talking with us.

JENNETTE MCCURDY, AUTHOR, “I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED”: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to hear.

MARTIN: The title of your one woman show and now, your book is, “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” Wow. So, how do you really, Jennette?

MCCURDY: I — you know, I get that it’s an attention-grabbing title. I definitely wanted it to be attention-grabbing and it’s also something that I mean really sincerely. I’m not saying it to be flippant in any way. It’s a point of view that was hard for me to come by. And I feel it’s a point of view I earned because of the life I lived in the writing of the book. And also, I think it’s a title that anybody who’s experienced parental abuse understands. And even if they haven’t, I think it’s somebody — it’s a title that anybody with a sense of humor understands.

MARTIN: I was going to say, that’s one of the things about that’s so remarkable, is it manages to be both very hilarious and deeply sad at the same time, which is kind of a hard trick to pull off.

MCCURDY: I think that’s the highest compliment. Thank you. I think that’s how life is for. For me, it has certainly been that way, where it’s sometimes soul-crushingly sad and just outstandingly hilarious at the same time, sometimes in the same room. And it’s where my point of view kind of is and to be acknowledged that way feels just like exactly what I was going for. So, thank you.

MARTIN: I want to start with your mom because she kind of is at the center of this whole thing. She was a piece of work, to put it mildly. And it’s hard — I got to be honest, it’s hard even to say some of these things, let alone realize that you lived these things. But, I mean, that she — you talked about how she showered you until you were 17 years old. She examined your body inappropriately. She pushed you and encouraged you into a very serious eating disorder that honestly could have killed you. You are able to name this now, she emotionally and, at times, physically abused and manipulated you. How did it all start? Do you know?

MCCURDY: I mean, I think it’s generational. I know she had a lot of struggles when she was young and I also know she had an array of mental health issues that went really just undiagnosed because she refused to get help for any of her mental health issues. It was just blatantly clear with her behavior that there was a lot of stuff going on, but she — and I think that’s a troubling thing because I think a lot of people have a lot of mental health struggles, but so many people work on this struggles and work to overcome them, work to manage them and she didn’t. And that’s, that was a really difficult thing for me to come to terms with, was not the issues that she had, but the fact that she chose not to work on those issues.

MARTIN: She pushed you into acting, you are very clear on that. That that was very much her dream, he obsession. You have three older brothers, right?

MCCURDY: Yes.

MARTIN: You’re the youngest. So, why was it that you were the target of all this? Is it because you were the girl, the only girl?

MCCURDY: I think it’s because I was only girl. And also, I think that my mom probably sensed the desperation I had to please her. My brothers were all, you know, incredibly lovely and they always have been, but I think that there was just a different need to please her, that I was born with maybe or I have also considered that it might — that might have started for me when my mom first got sick, I was two years old. And from what I understand, after, you know, going through therapy about this, that maternal connection is really important. I mean, always, but at that early of an age, if you’re — you don’t have the physical presence of your mom, it can lead to a lot of attachment trauma and wounds. And I am assuming a lot of my, sort of, need to please her and that desperation stemmed from that attachment trauma.

MARTIN: She had serious cancer when you were a child, very young child, and she recovered from it, at least, for a time. And it was a really big part of her story. It was like that was the play that she was in and she was playing it every day, kind of. Does that —

MCCURDY: Oh, my God. That’s so well-articulated. That’s exactly what it felt like. Of course, I didn’t notice at the time. I thought, you know, I was really on board with my mom’s — every one of my mom’s narrative that I was spoon fed from an early age, I was completely onboard with and completely supported more so than anybody and was just like her a little robot soldier. But now, I see it as her being really, you know, just very into martyrdom and being kind of a master at that. And of course, I sympathize with anybody who experiences cancer that’s an incredible struggle. But the way that she manipulated her cancer was very obscure and did, to your point, feel like it was a play, like the whole thing was the performance of, oh, I’m this cancer survivor. And she was telling everybody that she came across her story. So, from an early age I want, OK, this is what’s important to mom, is that she’s a survivor and she’s — you know, she’s a cancer survivor, that’s who she is.

MARTIN: You talked about that in your book. In the book, you talked about how she was trying to browbeat, maybe it was an agent or maybe it was a producer, and she’s giving you a role. And she said, OK, now, if you need me to pull out the cancer, I’ll do the ones. And I was like, oh, my God, you know, I’m sorry. Like again, like I said, the book is so funny, it’s so terrible at the same time. And I was — this is one of those examples.

MCCURDY: I love humor that comes from character flaws. And my mom had a lot of character flaws. So, I think she was inherently very funny, didn’t even recognize the parts of herself that were funny, but she was that way. Something she would always say is — yes, she’d say — like people love a story of somebody overcoming adversity in that. So, if you can plug my ductal carcinoma in there to a casting director, you’ll be sure to book it. Like she really wanted me to shoehorn in, hey, my mom’s got cancer, for auditions for “King of Queens.”

MARTIN: Some of the things she did was just terrible. And yet, you — you know, you idolized her and you had a compulsive need to please her. And at some point, it even feels good, I guess, if you’re the object of all this obsessive attention, and that has to be very confusing to a child.

MCCURDY: Oh, my God.

MARTIN: Is there a point at which you thought, this is — I mean, obviously, as an adult and we’ve done a tremendous amount of work to kind of reflect on this, but was there ever a point at which you though, you know what, this doesn’t seem right.

MCCURDY: I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of that question. I — at 11, I would say, when my mom — that’s when my mom initially taught me calorie restriction. She herself had eating issues for a long time. And in an attempt to sort of keep me in infantilized and also booking roles in entertainment where it’s valuable to look younger than her age, she taught me calorie restriction. And there — I started wondering then, kind of a couple months into the calorie restriction, I started wondering if something was off because I could sense concern in people around me. And I started piecing together, I don’t know if reality is mom’s reality, but I didn’t know how to come to terms with that. And it was why it was important for me to write the book in the point of view of the age that I was out as a child because I think that’s the best reflection of trauma and I think it’s the one of the best ways to find the humor and the tragedy because as heartbreaking as it is to hear about or witness any sort of child abuse, I also think the point of view of a child not knowing that it’s trauma and just thinking, this is life, this is great, mom loves me, I’m her best friend, I think that is inherently funny and sad at the same time.

MARTIN: So, when you were 21, your mom dies and she have recurrence of cancer, right? And she dies and that had to have been complicated. Was that the before and after? Like was that the point at which you could start to recover from what happened or was it actually — did it take longer than that?

MCCURDY: It took longer. I — initially, when she died, I was devastated. And then, I felt a wisp of relief. And immediately, the guilt and the shame kick in of, oh, no, I can’t feel relief that mom died, because mom was my everything. Mom was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I need to love mom. I need to adore mom. And so, I kept just clinging to the narratives that she’d condition me to have. And it was only when I first went to therapy, the therapist I was sharing some stories about my experience with my mom and framing them as protectively as I could toward my mom. Like this (INAUDIBLE) sharing stories in a very, very guarded way, and the therapist said, Jennette, what you’re talking about is abuse. Do you understand that? And I quit that therapist. I quit therapy. And I thought I’m not going to subscribe to this idea that my mom was abusive. And I — now, as I see it, it’s because I couldn’t face the reality of that because it would mean, and it did mean reframing everything that I knew about the world and the way that I saw the world and the lens just — it just meant reframing everything and it was too daunting and overwhelming at first. But then, eventually, I was able to confront that abuse and do the reframing work, which I see is being the most difficult inner work that I’ve ever done.

MARTIN: So, this where I wanted to talk about the Hollywood side of it because it’s not like you all were offered some, you know, island somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific while all this was going on. I think you were surrounded by people all the time. But you also make it clear like the people who are running the shows that you are a part of had elements of abuse of conduct also, which has since become public. You know, you refer to the showrunner of the show as “The Creator.” You say that he was emotionally abusive as well. You say that Nickelodeon offered you hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money to not publicly talk about your time at Nickelodeon or your experiences working with the showrunner whom you called “The Creator,” and you didn’t take it. And I’m curious about that. If a person who had been so pushed around for so long, what made you be like, no, enough?

MCCURDY: I will say this, I’m wary of this area of the book just because it’s been so publicized and so headlining, for lack of a better term. And I just think the book is so much more significant than this. So, I want to be able to celebrate the positive aspect of the book and the humor and healing that the book has to offer, which I think is just so much more important than anything that happened in my acting career.

MARTIN: Well, I would say this, several things. Well, first of all, I will say this, that we reached out to Nickelodeon and to representatives for “The Creator about your claims. Nickelodeon said they had no comment. We have not heard from the representatives of “The Creator.” You know, a friend who has worked in Hollywood as a journalist said to me once that, you know, it’s a terrible place for kids because it’s filled with adults who don’t want to grow up. Do you think that that’s — is there any truth to that?

MCCURDY: That’s so funny because, adults yes, they’re — maybe the adults don’t want to grow up and maybe the kids are forced to. But I think the thing about being a kid in entertainment is a lot of the — a lot of my, you know, fellow child performers, a lot of the kids that I grew up with were so incredibly bright, like so — you could just — you could just sense how smart they were. But smart doesn’t mean that you’re not naive and not gullible and not influenceable. And I think as smart as you’re forced to be from an early age in the entertainment industry, you’re still naive. And it’s just — it’s an adult’s game that you — that I didn’t have the tools to play. And I didn’t know how to navigate that world. But I do hope that with the work that I’m doing now, I really hope there’s positive change that happens for child performers now. I’d love if there was a child psychologist present on set, so that they can help the child to understand. Because you ‘re a kid, you don’t know, oh, this is my character psychology, which is different from my psychology. You’re just like doing the thing that you’re supposed to be doing, you know. I’d love if there could be a child psychologist onset to just help walk that child through the experience with the respect and the compassion that they deserve.

MARTIN: On of your co-stars, Miranda Cosgrove, who was your co-star of “iCarly,” she seems to have been an ally. Is that true?

MCCURDY: 100 percent. I adore Miranda. I will always adore Miranda. She was a friend at a time of my life when I really needed one. And she was just so there for me, and I hope I was there for her in the same way.

MARTIN: What was it that caused you to finally be able to make these changes for yourself? Because as you pointed out, you know, your mom died when you were 21 and you still were living with the legacy of what she’d given you, and these really serious eating disorders that could have killed you.

MCCURDY: I would frame all this in the book, it was sort of a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 punch of events in my life that happened that led me to a rock-bottom that I identified then as kind of like, oh, wow, this things could not get worse, like I need to do something about everything that’s going on because there’s no way but up from here. And the first step that I took was to start working with an eating disorder specialist. And I think that’s important because I don’t think — or I know, for me, I couldn’t have gotten to the deeper, more nuanced personal work and the unpacking of childhood and adolescence and fame and my mom, I couldn’t have done all that work if I didn’t have the eating disorder under control. I just think it would’ve been impossible. So, for me, it really was a matter of getting that addiction, getting a handle on that and then, doing the deeper work underneath it.

MARTIN: You spent too many years of your life worrying about what your mom would think. So, there is there. But I do wonder that would have made a difference if you had been able to get to a place where you could stand apart from it and say to her, this is the truth, this is my truth. I don’t know. Have you ever think about that?

MCCURDY: I do think about that. I wonder about that. I fantasize about there being some version of reality where if she had stayed alive, I would have confronted her. We would have had this, you know, amazing moment where she apologized, but she didn’t — that wouldn’t have happened just knowing who she was. And I truly believe the only reason I’m able to have an identity of my own and to have fulfillment is because she died. I think all of this processing happened after and because of her death.

MARTIN: Which is hence —

MCCURDY: Hency why —

MARTIN: The (INAUDIBLE).

MCCURDY: Yes, exactly.

MARTIN: OK. Jennette, before you leave though, the show that made you famous, you know, “iCarly,” you know, so many people love it and it did cause you a lot of pain. But I wonder, for all the girls and boys, you know, who love that show, deep — is it OK? Is it OK that loved it?

MCCURDY: Of course. It’s more than OK. I’m so happy that it made so many people laugh and experience joy. And I’m happy that it provided that for them. And I’m even more happy now that a lot of the people who watched the show are reading the book and connecting in what I think and hope is a much deeper way than maybe what their experience was with that.

MARTIN: Jennette McCurdy, thank you so much for talking with us today.

MCCURDY: Thank you for having me.