Jennette McCurdy has shared a number of upsetting stories about her time as a Nickelodeon child star in her new memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, and even detailed a moment with Ariana Grande that "broke" her.
When she starred alongside Grande in Nickelodeon's Sam and Cat between 2013 and 2014, McCurdy said she wasn't able to accept other opportunities that arose during her time filming the spinoff - something which Grande was able to do.
Per The New York Times, she wrote in her memoir: "What finally undid me was when Ariana came whistle-toning in with excitement because she had spent the previous evening playing charades at Tom Hanks’s house. That was the moment I broke."
The 30-year-old also shared in her candid book that she felt that her mother Debra - who died of cancer in 2013 - had essentially forced her into show business. Once she'd bagged the role of Sam Puckett on iCarly when she was 14, she said that she'd hoped her relationship with her mother would improve.
She wrote: "Everything’s going to be better. Mom will finally be happy. Her dream has come true."
Claiming that she was "exploited" as a young actor, McCurdy 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."
As quoted by The Times, one such instance of exploitation featured in her memoir, which saw the then-minor "photographed in a bikini at a wardrobe fitting and being encouraged to drink alcohol by an intimidating figure she simply calls the Creator."
The actress also went on to claim that after Sam and Cat was canceled in 2014, she was offered - and ultimately rejected - a $300,000 offer to refrain from speaking out about her time at Nickelodeon.
McCurdy briefly starred in the Netflix show Between, after which she went on a break from acting. She did not make an appearance in Paramount+'s iCarly reboot, which has just been renewed for a second season.