Jennifer Aniston to Star in New Series Adapted From Jenette McCurdy’s ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’

Jennifer Aniston’s role as Jenette McCurdy’s mom in the upcoming TV adaptation of her best-selling memoir I’m Glad My Mom’s Dead may seem like a tough role to dig into considering what the former child actress revealed about their relationship, but the Friends star says that’s far from the truth. Aniston recently opened up about why she is able to relate to the role ahead of filming.

“We have a lot in common,” Aniston told PEOPLE. “We had very similar moms.”

“When it came across my desk as an option, an offer to play this character and work with Jennette and Sharon Horgan and LuckyChap, I was pretty much immediately intrigued and flattered and excited,” Aniston added”It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to be pretty great to start shooting it.” Aniston also praises the memoir as “so beautifully written,” and says McCurdy “is so special.”

“The fact that she’s the young woman that she is, having lived that life, is nothing short of remarkable,” Aniston says during a conversation about her latest campaign with Pvolve to launch the Longevity Bundle.

McCurdy’s mom, Debra, died in 2013, and in the memoir, McCurdy alleged that Debra had forced her into acting, accusing her of various abusive acts and claiming her mother led her to develop an eating disorder and allowed her to be exploited during her career as a young actor. 

Aniston spoke about her own estranged and complicated relationship with mother, Nancy Dow, who died in 2016. “She was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like. I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for,” she told The Sunday Telegraph in 2018. 

Aniston has also said that she grew up in a “household that was destabilized and felt unsafe,” and called her mom, who divorced “critical,” saying, “She was very critical of me. Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn’t. I never was,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I honestly still don’t think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine.”