Ex-Nickelodeon star opens up about ‘twisted’ age-gap relationship that started on set and inspired debut novel

Former child star Jennette McCurdy has addressed the controversial romance she had with a much older man she met on the set of Nickelodeon’s iCarly, which would later serve as inspiration for her forthcoming debut novel, Half His Age.

McCurdy, 33, was around 14 when she was cast as Sam Puckett alongside Miranda Cosgrove’s Carly on the five-season teen sitcom in 2007. She first opened up about her “creepy” age-gap relationship with an unidentified man in her best-selling 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died.

Now, McCurdy has shared new details of the relationship on the latest episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, saying the whole situation “was just so twisted.”

“I was most likely 18,” she explained of when the relationship with the unidentified man, who was in his 30s at the time, began. After work in the writer’s room, the man would “show me movies that he thought I would like. Like, Dazed and Confused, which I did not like but I pretended to like,” she continued. “He would play me music that I did not like, but I pretended to like.”

McCurdy said there was a power dynamic at play given the age gap between herself and the man, as well as the fact that he had a long-term girlfriend with whom he was living.

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“It was just exhausting,” she continued. But when she spoke up, the man would suddenly change his tune.

“‘I’m gonna leave my girlfriend, I need to be with you. I'm gonna leave my girlfriend,’” McCurdy recalled him telling her.

“Can you imagine now being with like a [teenager]? Creepy.”

McCurdy went on to share several “red flags” from the relationship, including being pressured into performing sexual acts despite her desire to wait until marriage. She recalled one particular instance where the man showed up to a hotel where she was staying at the time and asked her to perform oral sex.

“I didn’t know what that was,” McCurdy, who described herself as “Mormon and homeschooled,” recalled. “I was like, ‘That sounds kind of weird. I’m nervous to do this,’ and he was like, ‘I’ll guide you through it.’

“It was very, ‘I'm respectful of your boundary that you can't have sex before marriage, but I also have needs of my own,’” she continued.

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McCurdy also admitted to having sex with him before she was ready. “I disregarded my self-imposed rule,” she said.

While the relationship tapered off shortly after the death of McCurdy’s mother in 2013, the former child star has relived many of her experiences while writing her forthcoming novel.

“Writing is my way to closure for past experiences,” she said. “I didn’t realize how angry I still was. I didn’t think of this person ever that I was in a relationship with at all. He wasn’t on my mind. Then I’m writing this book … because I have so much anger, so much left to process.”

When asked by Cooper about what she hopes the novel achieves, McCurdy said: “I hope it sparks conversation, conversations around desire and power. Those are the two areas where I think there's so much to discuss.”

Half His Age will be released January 20.