Jennette McCurdy was a popular face on Nickelodeon in the 2000s, but for a number of reasons,
she's stepped back from the spotlight in recent years. Here's why she's not
getting cast much anymore and what the future has in store for her.
In March 2014, three racy photos of McCurdy were leaked online,
which put the future of her Nickelodeon show Sam & Cat in jeopardy. McCurdy seemed to imply that
the culprit behind the leak was NBA player Andre Drummond, whom she dated in 2013, as she tweeted,
"To anyone disappointed: I sent those pics to 1 person.
You can connect the dots. Shocked someone would stoop so low. I just speak [with] candor."
When people started pointing fingers at Drummond, he tweeted in response,
"For all the speculations about leaking anything,
I have nothing to do with it. I'm focused on basketball. Thank you."
Ultimately, the leaker's identity was never definitively revealed. McCurdy later took to
Reddit to address the leaked photos as well as some recent Instagram selfies, as she wrote,
"I post to social media when I want to and how I want to and I would whether I was in
the entertainment industry or not. I don't believe people should attack me
because their image of me is destroyed after I post a harmless, sultry photo."
She added,
"I don't believe an actor/actress should lose the rights to be themselves in an attempt to
cater to the image that was created by a character they played. that's all."
Ultimately, Sam & Cat was canceled after just one season not because of
McCurdy's leaked photos but because of her rocky relationship with Nickelodeon. When
rumors circulated that her co-star Ariana Grande was being paid more than McCurdy,
Grande cleared the air on TwitLonger by saying,
"Jennette and I agreed upfront that we would be treated equally on this show in all regards
(as we should be, considering we each work just as hard as the other on this show)."
Fans then speculated that McCurdy and Grande didn't get along,
but as McCurdy explained to E! News,
"I just feel that Ariana and I were and are extremely close and extremely
like-minded in a lot of different ways, and then, sorta as the show dissolved
everybody wanted to find some sort of hidden meaning in our relationship."
She added,
"I think we butted heads at times but in a very sisterly way. Like she knows me so well
and I know her so well that I think it was unfortunate that things got misconstrued."
After Sam & Cat, McCurdy moved on to a four-part web series called What's Next for Sarah?, which
she wrote, co-edited, executive produced, and starred in. It premiered on Vimeo on August 13th,
2014. Taking inspiration from McCurdy's own life, she played Sarah, an actress
whose world begins to fall apart after a hit show she stars on gets canceled. Many viewers
speculated that a self-absorbed character named Gloriana was based on Ariana Grande,
partly because of a physical resemblance. McCurdy never admitted that the character was a direct
reference to her old co-star, but she did address the subject during an interview with ABC News.
"So I'll ask about Gloriana then."
"Oh, yeah. That was definitely a character that was heightened for comedic purposes."
McCurdy further explained that there were blogs that blew the whole thing
out of proportion and that she was just trying to make a joke out of her
own experience. She also talked about her relationship with Grande, as she revealed,
"We've had coffee since this web series and everything, we've talked. She's awesome,
and I wish her all the best, and I know that she does the same for me."
Another major factor in McCurdy's break from acting was the loss of
her mother Debbie in 2013. In 1995, Debbie was diagnosed with
breast cancer and initially beat it back with treatment. But fifteen years later,
the cancer had returned and spread. As McCurdy wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2011,
"I can't imagine how difficult it must be for my mother to tolerate all she has gone through and
continues to go through — the pain, the worry and the battle. She wakes up every day hurting
and goes to sleep hurting even more. My mother, the constant optimist and effervescent,
sprightly woman I know her to be, is caged along with this hideous beast they call cancer."
In 2015, McCurdy told Vulture that instead of mourning, she worked. As she put it,
"Six days after my mom died I went back to work. I thought, 'Oh if I do this Vine video,
or if I do this episode, if I hit every mark, then I'll be fine because I'll have something else to
focus on.' But really I was just putting this huge life-changing event on the back burner and it was
slowly causing me to unravel to the point where I would say I got to my lowest emotional point."
Throughout her career, McCurdy has suffered from eating disorders,
which she opened up about in a 2019 essay in The Huffington Post. As she explained,
"My disordered eating started when I was 11. As a child actress working in Hollywood,
I quickly learned that remaining physically small
for my age meant I had a better chance of booking more roles. Unfortunately,
I had a trusty and dedicated companion ready to help me with my burgeoning anorexia: my mom!"
She added,
"I don't hold this against my mom at all. I don't think she could help it.
Mom had been hospitalized for anorexia on several occasions when she was a teenager
and I'm not convinced she ever overcame her disordered eating."
McCurdy's anorexia would turn into binge eating and eventually bulimia. After experiencing
several come-to-Jesus moments such as losing a tooth and popping blood vessels in her eyes,
she finally decided that she needed help and met an eating disorder specialist. She'd already
worked with a therapist a year and a half earlier, but this time, she was committed. As she wrote,
"The important thing was getting back on the recovery program anytime I had a slip so that,
as they say in recovery, 'the slip doesn't become a slide.'"
"I suggest finding something, whatever your passion is, whatever your hobby is, whatever,
just finding something that will satisfy you and fulfill you."
After the death of her mother, McCurdy felt lost and turned
to alcohol. As she explained on her podcast Empty Inside in 2020,
"I'd be drunk in the middle of the street in France. I was supposed
to do a press junket the next day. I got completely wasted."
In another episode of Empty Inside, McCurdy discussed her struggle with obsessive-compulsive
disorder and how it was related to her Mormon upbringing. As she explained,
"In the Mormon church, they teach you about this thing called the 'still small
voice' [...] you're supposed to listen for it and it kind of guides you to do what's right.
For me, I confused my anxiety with the still small voice."
She added,
"I had OCD as a kid and I'd be like 'Okay, so my still small voice is telling me that
I need to touch this thing ten times before I touch this other thing ten
times so that I can then go to the door and open this five times because the still small
voice is telling that I need to do these things or else my mom's going to die.'"
In her Huffington Post essay about her eating disorders, McCurdy explained that
she didn't want to be a role model during her Nickelodeon days on iCarly. As she put it,
"I had [...] become acutely aware that I was a role model for kids,
which I felt like I was supposed to find cool but actually found upsetting.
My great 'contribution' to society was walking onto an overlit Nickelodeon set
shouting lines about fried chicken [...] and that's what kids were looking up to?"
"Can I have a chicken puck?"
"You want one of my chicken pucks?"
"Uh-huh."
"Just one puck?"
"Yeah."
"No."
McCurdy further explained,
"There was something about the shallowness of my success that made me resent it. That
resentment festered, providing even more fuel for
my disordered eating. I actively began to engage in anorexic behavior again."
Obviously, not everyone has to be perfect, but McCurdy found it especially absurd to be seen as
a role model for playing an obnoxious character on a children's show. Not to mention that this
was all going on while her mother was dying and she was suffering from disordered eating.
In December 2020, it was reported that an iCarly revival with most of the original cast was set to
stream on Paramount+. But one cast member not returning was Jennette McCurdy. Eight months
earlier, McCurdy told Elite Daily that she doesn't look back fondly on the show. As she put it,
"I still have complicated feelings toward my past from my experience with Nickelodeon. It's
something that I work on. I'd like to get to a place of peace with my past. That would be great."
On the bright side, though, McCurdy was at least happy for the time she
spent with her iCarly co-workers, as she noted,
"I would not have such an enjoyable life if these people weren't in it.
The human connections you have with people is always what determines whether,
ultimately, something is a good or bad experience."
While McCurdy has mixed feelings about her iCarly days, it's at least heartening
to hear about the special connections she made during her time on the show.
Beginning in 2015, McCurdy starred on the Canadian sci-fi series Between.
It ran for two seasons, and after it wasn't renewed for a third, she decided to take a
break from acting and focus on other projects. This was ultimately part of an effort to work
on something she could truly be happy about. As she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018,
"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."
McCurdy assembled an all-female crew as she wrote and directed the short film Kenny,
which was inspired by her mother's death. It premiered in 2018 on Short of the Week,
a YouTube channel that showcases short films from around the world. McCurdy has also written
and directed other short films, like The McCurdys, which is based on her childhood,
and Strong Independent Women, which covers eating disorders.
In 2020, McCurdy started hosting the podcast Empty Inside, which covers many personal topics
such as stage parents, rejection, and dating. Her guests have included the likes of former American
Idol contestant David Archuleta, filmmaker Zane Rubin, and comedian Taylor Tomlinson.
McCurdy may not be acting much these days, but she appears to be doing what makes her happy.
In a February 2021 episode of Empty Inside,
McCurdy officially announced that she wouldn't return to acting anytime soon. As she put it,
"I quit a few years ago because I initially didn't want to do it. My mom put me in it
when I was 6 and by [...] age [...] 10 or 11, I was the main financial support for my family,
and it was very much just like the pressure of my family didn't have a lot of money, and this was
kind of the way out, which I actually think was helpful in driving me to some degree of success."
McCurdy also noted that acting was difficult because of her nerves
during auditions and that she lost much of her interest in acting after her mom died.
"With her death kind of died a lot of her ideas for my life and that was
its own journey and a difficult one, for sure."
She also reiterated that she feels ashamed of many roles that she played. As she explained,
"I resent my career in a lot of ways. I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I
played and felt like it was the most cheesy, embarrassing. I did the shows
that I was on from like 13 to 21, and by 15, I was already embarrassed. My friends at 15,
they're not like, 'Oh, cool, you're on this Nickelodeon show.' It was embarrassing."
We're sad to hear that McCurdy has no intentions of acting again anytime soon,
but we're glad that she's now choosing to do what makes her happy.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357.