Jennette McCurdy left child stardom behind — and worked her ‘ass off’ to get a second act

Jennette McCurdy always hated parties. They felt obligatory, not fun. Then, her author friend Maria Semple threw her one to celebrate her debut novel, Half His Age. In a room full of writers, something shifted.

“It was the best party I’d ever been to — hands down,” McCurdy tells Yahoo. “I realized, Oh, I’ve just been going to the wrong parties with the wrong people. I was so fulfilled and heartened to be in the company that I was in and to be having the conversations I was having. I’ve never felt more of a sense of belonging.”

For someone who was put to work as a child performer at age 6, that feeling carries weight. At 33, with Half His Age on the New York Times bestseller list for the fourth week — and her 2022 memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died still charting — McCurdy isn’t just attending the party. She belongs there.

“It’s incredibly meaningful,” McCurdy says of finally working in a profession she chose for herself. “It’s really transformed my life.”

McCurdy spent her childhood on Nickelodeon, starring in iCarly and Sam & Cat, in a career shaped by her overbearing and abusive stage mother and a sense of financial responsibility to her family. She quit acting in her 20s. Writing is different, she says. This time, she’s steering.

“It’s such a testament to authenticity,” she says. “Once you start becoming more of yourself, accepting more of yourself, you find your people. It’s that domino effect where everything in your life starts … lining up in ways you couldn’t have imagined.”

Perhaps because her own adolescence was so scrutinized — or because she has spent years interrogating it — McCurdy writes about girlhood with unflinching clarity. She did so in her memoir, and she does it again in Half His Age through her 17-year-old protagonist, Waldo.

Waldo is largely raising herself. Her single mother, a love addict, is only intermittently present. When she begins a sexual relationship with her 40-year-old married teacher, Mr. Korgy, the novel moves into deliberately uncomfortable terrain.

A teenager’s car trysts with her teacher are meant to be unsettling. Yet McCurdy’s narrative returns us to the blurred lines, impulsive decisions and misplaced certainty of that age.

On her press tour, McCurdy has spoken publicly about her own “creepy” relationship with an older man when she was 18. She hopes readers approach Waldo — and their younger selves — with more generosity than judgment.

“One of the takeaways that I hope women have — knowing many readers will be older than Waldo — is that we have this tendency to look back on our past self and cringe,” McCurdy says. “We focus on the embarrassment … the shortcomings, the regrets, the mistakes. I hope Waldo serves as an opportunity to reframe our relationship with our past self into one that has more self-compassion and understanding.”

Of our teenage selves, she adds simply: “She got us here. She was trying her best.”

The sex scenes in Half His Age were nonnegotiable. Each one, she says, reflects a different emotional state Waldo inhabits.

“I did many drafts, but one was specifically on the sex scenes,” she says. “I isolated them. Each one reflects Waldo in a different emotional state. So many things can drive sex — rage, humiliation, shame, sadness, loneliness. I wanted there to be a different emotional driver for each of those scenes.”

She resisted romanticizing the material.

“I don’t write in a flowery way,” she says. “It’s not for me. I had to trust my gut. Sex is so often portrayed in a romanticized way. That’s not what I was trying to do. I think sex can be sexy, which it is in this book. Sex can be disgusting, which it is in this book. It can be a lot of things.”

A major theme of the novel is rage — specifically, its suppression. As unsettling as the four-letter word can sound, it can bring better things, which McCurdy knows from experience.

“Rage has informed every significant life decision I’ve ever made,” she says. “Rage — with my circumstances previously — dictated those decisions that have led me to a much better life.”

She continues, “For Waldo, she’s becoming furious in this relationship, but she keeps showing up and being nice and grateful for the crumbs she’s given because she thinks that will earn her love. It makes me angry talking about it now. I think it’s an experience every woman has found herself in, whether or not she was in an age-gap relationship. It’s infuriating to me … the ways in which we stifle our own voices to make ourselves more convenient for other people. I’m sick of it.”

McCurdy’s writing life is expanding beyond the page. She’s developing and directing a series adaptation of her memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, with Jennifer Aniston playing her mother — a surreal full-circle moment for someone who once grew up on sitcom sets herself.

She’s also at work on something new. “But I can’t say much about it,” she teases. “I can’t say anything about it. I wish I could.”

Second acts aren’t easily granted in Hollywood — especially to women, and especially to former child stars. McCurdy knows that. She also knows she’s earned this one.

“Well, I’ve worked my ass off, so I’ll say that first,” she says. “But to feel that sense of belonging … and, candidly, the critical reception … it’s been so meaningful. This is what I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. To be able to do it now is a dream come true. As corny as that answer is, it’s 100% where I’m at.”