Trivia / Jennette McCurdy

• Creator Backlash: Let's just say Jennette does not look back on her career during her teens with much fondness, if any at all.
  • Jennette does not have fond memories of her experience on the show iCarly, and has detailed this in multiple interviews as well as her 2022 memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died. She has said that, in part, she resented her past acting career in general due to suffering from depression, eating disorders, insecurities and embarrassment over her kiddie roles, and that she associates acting with a lot of her mental health triggers. She also hated playing Sam, as she felt that the character was a bad role model for children, flat-out unlikeable, and so different from her real self that she found her difficult to portray, and further found the show in general to be terrible. According to her, it was never her intention to pursue a full-time acting career, but her mother (who she has stated was extremely abusive) made her become a child actress to financially support the family and to live vicariously through her. In her memoir, she further alleged that while working on iCarly, she suffered significant emotional abuse from a higher-up she only refers to as "The Creator"^note who is near-universally speculated by readers and commenters to be Dan Schneider, enough that Nickelodeon would eventually offer her hush money. Shortly after her mom died, Jennette left Nickelodeon when Sam & Cat got canned and was happy to leave; she would later retire from on-camera acting in 2017, and as such refused to return for iCarly's revival on Paramount+.
  • Jennette also stated in a podcast with Nerdist that she generally hated her brief foray into country-pop music. In 2009, she was signed to Capitol Records Nashville, who she said largely tried to take control over what she produced. They apparently forced her to constantly plug them in interviews and say that she "grew up with country music", even though she didn't. This likely had played a large hand in her album (initially slated for a summer 2009 release) being pushed all the way to 2012. However, this was more of a case of her disliking the process of touring and being controlled by Capitol Nashville; she seemed okay with actually writing and recording the music, and even did YouTube covers long before she was signed to any label.