It’s a path so well-trodden it’s become its own clichéd Hollywood story arc: a child star is born, becomes the shiny new plaything of TV and film studios, wins the hearts of millions for their precocious talent, then... plot twist.
It all goes wrong and we find out the truth
Jennette McCurdy, 30, is one of the exceptions. You might not have heard of her, but to young millennials and Gen Zers she’s a household name.
From 2007 to 2014 McCurdy starred as online influencer Sam Puckett in two hit Nickelodeon teen series, iCarly and Sam & Cat one episode of the former attracted 11.2m viewers and remains the network's second-most watched broadcast in history. A reboot last year was a success story from which the creators of the revamped Sex & The City could learn a lot.
Like Kim Cattrall, McCurdy elected not to appear. Instead, she wrote a one-woman show a potent and critical analysis of child stardom, mixed with her own lost childhood. When the pandemic stopped her from performing it, she decided to turn the script into her new memoir: I'm Glad My Mom Died.
Those curious to pull back the curtain on the disturbing truth behind the glossy Hollywood veneer should look no further. McCurdy writes openly and without self-pity about her experiences as a young actress, claiming that she was “exploited” by a senior man at Nickelodeon who she names only as “The Creator”.
“I feel that I always need to be on guard around him. Catering to him emotionally,” she recalls, alleging that he encouraged her to drink alcohol underage and against her will, massaged her non-consensually, requested that she be photographed wearing a bikini, and was eventually banned from the set following accusations of emotional abuse.
When her show was cancelled, McCurdy says the network offered her $300,000 in exchange for not speaking about her time working with The Creator (something they have not yet responded to). She declined.
“What the f***? Nickelodeon is offering me three hundred thousand dollars in hush money to not talk publicly about my experience on the show? My personal experience of The Creator’s abuse? This is a network with shows made for children. Shouldn’t they have some sort of moral compass? Shouldn’t they at least try to report to some sort of ethical standard?” she writes.
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Advertise with NZME.Pushy parents are often at the heart of Hollywood’s child star cautionary tales, and McCurdy’s mother, Debra, takes that to extremes. The actress writes with a mix of wit, anger and pain about the maternal abuse she suffered. In the early part of the book her desperation to please “Mommy” jumps agonisingly off the page, as she tries to keep up with the moods and manipulation of the woman who was first diagnosed with breast cancer when McCurdy was just two years old and succumbs to it when her daughter is 21, in 2013.
Debra pushes a six-year-old McCurdy into acting to fulfill the ambition she herself was prevented from pursuing (“You want to be Mommy’s little actress?”), despite her daughter’s protestations that it makes her feel “uncomfortable”.
Into that category also fall the breast and vaginal examinations Debra insists on conducting in the shower until McCurdy is well into her teens (to check for cancer, she claims) forcing her to work when she is unwell, hurling insults in her direction, and when she begins showing signs of puberty aged 11 teaching her how to restrict calories to remain small and continue being cast in child roles. McCurdy is soon anorexic, later bulimic.
She learns to fake her emotions, beaming at birthday gifts she dislikes in order not to enrage her mother, who she describes as a hoarder of such intensity that the children are forced to sleep on gym mats in the living room, as their bedrooms are used for storage.
“I lock eyes with Mom so she’ll know I care about her, that she’s my priority,” she writes, as she blows out candles on her sixth birthday cake. “We’re so connected,” is a frequent refrain.
When, after Debra’s death, a therapist suggests that being declared her mother’s “best friend” was abusive behaviour, McCurdy storms out and doesn’t return, initially unable to see what has become so clear to the reader. (Her father, she describes as “not present” and “uninterested”).
Indeed, the book’s opening scene is one of the most telling: she and her three brothers gather around their unconscious mother’s deathbed each sharing momentous news in the hopes that she might wake up – one is engaged to be married, another moving to California.
“Mommy, I am so skinny right now. I’m finally down to 89 pounds,” says McCurdy thinking that she will have, at last, won her approval. Like most of her anecdotes, this is not played for sympathy but told with a straightforwardness that speaks to serious amounts of therapy.
Other moments are more introspective. “I’m abusing my body every day. I’m miserable. I’m depleted. And yet the compliments keep pouring in,” McCurdy writes of the frankly creepy remarks made by Hollywood executives while she is in the throes of an eating disorder and alcohol dependency.
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Advertise with NZME.“It’s really hard for me to not focus on your ass.”
“You’re really starting to blossom.”
“You’ve never looked better, but I’d stop where you are. Any more and you’ll start to look bad-thin.”
It’s a damning indictment of an industry that habitually treats young women as commodities and fails its female stars over and over again. Anne Heche, the 53-year-old actress who died following a car crash last week, is one such example: as one of the first openly lesbian A-list actresses, her career was marred by homophobia and misogyny.
Child stars spring to mind: Brittany Murphy, who died aged 32 in 2009, following years of scrutiny over her body (Hollywood executives told her she was ‘not f***able enough’) that left her vulnerable to an abusive marriage. And actress Demi Lovato who, last year, told how she was raped at 15 while part of the Disney franchise, leading to years of disordered eating and substance abuse – her attacker, whom she reported, was allowed to continue working.
As the years wear on, McCurdy describes feeling "betrayed" and "foolish" for believing that the adults in her orbit had her best interests at heart. She feels particularly let down when her Sam & Cat co-star Ariana Grande, now one of the world's most lauded pop singers, was allowed to pursue her music career alongside filming, while McCurdy claims she was blocked from exploring other opportunities.
After quitting acting, McCurdy begins to understand the extent to which she has been controlled: she didn’t know how to dress for herself, having always been told what to wear. At 18, she discovered the joy of showering alone. Her first sexual experiences were tinged with distress, as she knew so little about what to expect.
In hindsight, she feels “robbed and exploited”.
“The second the child star tries to outgrow and break free from their image, they become bait for the media, highly publicised as rebellious, troubled, and tortured, when all they’re trying to do is grow,” she writes. “Growing is wobbly and full of mistakes, especially as a teenager mistakes that you certainly don’t want to make in the public eye, let alone be known for the rest of your life. But that’s what happens when you’re a child star. Child stardom is a trap. A dead end.”
For McCurdy, at least, that dead end hasn't proved final. But how much impact her cautionary tale will have over the male-dominated entertainment industry is not, I fear, the Hollywood ending she might have hoped for.
This article was originally published in The Daily Telegraph.
