Jennette McCurdy Is Glad Her Mom Is Dead (along With Her Nickelodeon Career)

When McCurdy looks at the little kids in her life, it seems hard not to think about all the things she’s missed. She remains close to all of her brothers and especially her nieces, even though she has mostly fallen out with the other adults in her life. “I recently went on a Disney trip with Claire, my brother Mark’s daughter, and I watched her and went to the bathroom and just cried because it’s so beautiful to watch a kid just be like that can be as it is,” she said. “This is a headstrong, hilarious kid who is so authentic. I think I’ve been healed by observing her and her relationship with her parents. Just being able to be with kids who are so… free.” (She’s thankful her mom isn’t there to blame the rest of her family. “Oh god,” she said. ” I was just appalled at how she would have treated my nieces.”)

McCurdy is undergoing remarkable therapy these days. She put so much work into it and it shows in the slow, thoughtful way she answers each question. She wants to be clear and she wants to tell the truth. She also still struggles with the feeling that she was already defined by the work she was doing at 19. “Even seeing friends’ Facebook posts like ‘started my first job!’ In those momentous first experiences, I felt like my life was already behind me,” she said. “There was a time when I really didn’t have much hope for my future.”

But she also has so much shame. There’s no shame in everything her mother did to her; it’s actually about her career. Almost a decade removed from the work she did as a literal child, McCurdy feels ashamed of the work she was left with. “I find the content embarrassing. I just wish I had never done it,” she said. “I appreciate the financial stability. I am grateful for the doors it has opened for me in so many ways and for the friendships I have made. But I’m just embarrassed by the content.” Simply put, McCurdy doesn’t think the shows she’s been on are very good Well. It doesn’t matter if these shows were made for kids—kids who loved it—nor does it matter that she was a kid herself at the time they were filmed. “The embarrassment remains. It’s so important to me to do a good job. It’s that ‘what do I do with it’ shame.” McCurdy is more open these days about thinking about acting again, but she sees herself primarily as a writer. For now, she’s just happy to be off the sitcom machine. Introduce! She could be a hot but unhappy wife in an ABC pilot. “I would have done sitcom after sitcom,” she said, impersonating one of those thankless roles. “Dinner!”

That doesn’t mean she thinks she’s a bad actress; In fact, she knows she’s pretty good at it. “I played so much in real life. It was such an active performance that it felt like I could be more real acting than having to be off camera,” she said. “I was able to show emotions that I wasn’t allowed to show in real life.”

But you know what’s funny? McCurdy seems to despise the industry she’s dutifully worked in for half her life while also being a Disney adult, of all people. “I know. I know. I know!” she said, laughing at her own admission. “We could have sat at the Disneyland Hotel! I know all the good spots. I don’t do a lot of rides, I just find the cool environments that are relatively inanimate. I’ll bring my diary with me. It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Full grown Disney adult.” McCurdy has a long association with Disney — her grandfather worked there and was always able to register the family, and it was the one place her mother wasn’t stressed. Now 30, McCurdy watches Disney vlogs and buys embroidered Disney shirts on Etsy. “I’ll just escape.”

McCurdy asked me if I wanted children; I asked her the same thing. She might say no, but that could change. It’s hard to think about your own offspring when your mother only sees you as an extension of herself, someone who can be controlled and manipulated. As someone without free will. Can you raise someone well if you haven’t shown them how? “But when I say I’m not a mother, people say I am So maternal. What is it?” She asked me. I told her that people might see someone healed, that healing pain can look like caring to other people, that it can give you mothering qualities even when you’re not from someone at all were brought up in a very motherly way, even if you never experienced motherly love first-hand.

Her large eyes glazed over with tears and she clutched her chest. “This makes me emotional,” she said, crying but with a half smile. “It’s so powerful. In order not to hold it. To say, Wow, I’ve been looking at all this shit. I didn’t run from it. I checked it out.”●