Former iCarly star Jennette McCurdy, who last month launched a one-woman show titled I’m Glad My Mom Died, has opened up about the abuse she says she experienced starting as a child.
In a new People feature, McCurdy—who declined to reprise her role as Sam on the recent iCarly revival—looked back on her earliest memories of childhood as being comprised of “heaviness and chaos.” According to McCurdy, who’s now 29, her late mother Debbie first began bleaching her hair and whitening her teeth when she was 10. One year later, McCurdy’s mother introduced her to the practice of calorie counting, which later ballooned into anorexia by the time she was cast on iCarly.
Until the age of 17, McCurdy said, her mother “insisted on” vaginal and breast exams. Additionally, she never allowed McCurdy to take a shower on her own. As for the eating restrictions, McCurdy was living on just 1,000 calories per day at one point.
McCurdy said she’s since made it her “mission” to take the leap of changing her life for the better, ultimately leaving the Hollywood infrastructure behind to carve out a new path detached from the trappings of her relationship with her mother, who died of cancer in 2013. And thanks to therapy, McCurdy said she was able to recover from an eating disorder in 2018.
Next year, McCurdy will expand the I’m Glad My Mom Died project into a new book. “I’ve lived a lot of life and have a lot of stories to tell,” she previously said of the book, which is slated for a summer release.
Back in 2019, McCurdy wrote and directed the short film “Strong Independent Women,” starring Maria Bamford and Addison Riecke. The short centers on the relationship between a mother and daughter, the latter of whom is struggling with an eating disorder. Catch it below via Vimeo.
If you or someone you know is in an abusive situation, help is available. Help is also available for those who may be struggling with an eating disorder.
