Miranda Cosgrove Reacts to ‘iCarly’ Co-Star Jennette McCurdy’s Devastating Accounts of Her Career

Actress Jennette McCurdy has been making waves with new revelations from her iCarly days, and her co-star Miranda Cosgrove is as surprised as anyone, she says. McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died was published on Tuesday, Aug. 9, and includes stories of her “exploited childhood” and teenage years. Cosgrove told The New York Times that some of the darker allegations in the book were brand new to her.

“When you’re young, you’re so in your own head. You can’t imagine that people around you are having much harder struggles,” Cosgrove said. She and McCurdy both worked under the controversial Nickelodeon showrunner Dan Schneider, who is the implied subject of some of the allegations in McCurdy’s book. However, many of the anecdotes are about McCurdy’s mother, and those seem to be the ones that caught Cosgrove off-guard.

“You don’t expect things like that from the person in the room who’s making everyone laugh,” Cosgrove reportedly said of McCurdy. McCurdy played Sam Puckett on iCarly from 2007 to 2012, then played the same character on the spinoff Sam & Cat from 2013 to 2014. In 2013, McCurdy’s mother Debra passed away, and she abruptly decided to quit the Nickelodeon shows.

In her new book, McCurdy writes that her mother was very controlling of her behind the scenes, functioning as a kind of manager. She writes that her mother turned a blind eye to some troubling incidents behind the scenes, including one instance where McCurdy was vocally uncomfortable being photographed in a bikini by production staff. McCurdy recalls her mother pressuring her to pose for the photos anyway and saying: “Everyone wants what you have.”

McCurdy also claims she was served alcohol while she was underage by a person she refers to as “the creator,” and she also recounts years of untreated eating disorders with disastrous effects on her health. She told the Times: “My whole childhood and adolescence were very exploited. It still gives my nervous system a reaction to say it. There were cases where people had the best intentions and maybe didn’t know what they were doing. And also cases where they did – they knew exactly what they were doing.”

McCurdy originally wrote I’m Glad My Mom Died as a one-woman show which premiered in February of 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its theatrical schedule was scrapped. She adapted it into a book which is available now in print, digital and audiobook formats. McCurdy narrates the audiobook version herself.