Jennette McCurdy reveals on the first season of her podcast, “Empty Inside,” why she’s done acting.
“I’m very sorry about my career,” she said. “I feel so unfulfilled by the roles I played, and feel like it was the most beautiful, embarrassing … I can imagine that there is a very different experience with acting if you are proud of your roles.”
The former Nickelodeon star opened in the February 24 episode of ‘Empty Inside’, starring Anna Faris. Their discussion discussed the infidelity of talk shows, rejection, and early actions.
Faris reflected on operational problems, but eventually came to the conclusion that she was feeling the acting “itch” again. She asked if McCurdy ever felt rewarded by a character she played.
“I’m so ashamed of the parts I’ve done in the past,” McCurdy said. “I realize that this answer does not like each other very much.”
Now, 28, McCurdy is best known for her role as Sam Puckett in Nickelodeon’s “iCarly,” which was Miranda Cosgrove’s best friend Carly. Later, she plays Sam in an ‘iCarly’ – ‘Victorious’ spinoff called ‘Sam & Cat’ with Ariana Grande, but the show only lasts one season.
Sharing their past career stories, McCurdy remembered when she was 10 years old. Her mother yelled at her agent because McCurdy did not audition for 2005’s “Because of Winn-Dixie.” The agent was on speakerphone, so McCurdy heard her say she did not get the audition because she was ‘homey’ and not an ‘ethereal beauty’.
“I quit a few years ago because I initially did not want to do it,” McCurdy explained. “My family did not have a lot of money, and that was the way out that I thought was helpful in promoting me to some degree of success.”
Acting has always been difficult for McCurdy, and when she got her nerves under control and started pulling in her career, her mother died.
“With her death, many of her ideas for my life died, and it was his own journey, and for sure a difficult one.”
She considers her one-woman, self-written show from February last year, ‘I’m Blad My Mom Died’, a one-off event, suggesting she’s unlikely to take part in the ‘iCarly’ revival in the works at Paramount Plus not.
“If it was a director I really admired, or someone whose work I really admired, then I would be so excited,” McCurdy said. “But just because of my past and the auditions that would appear in my eyes, I was OK, that’s how the industry sees me, and I do not want to do that.”