‘I wanted her to look good’: Jennette McCurdy says she defended her mom’s ‘abusive’ behavior for years
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Jennette McCurdy spoke about her relationship with her mother Debra McCurdy in a pre-recorded interview that aired on October 24, Monday's episode of 'The Drew Barrymore Show'. Jennette, 30, shared that she would defend her "abusive" mother in her therapy sessions.
The former Nickelodeon child star stated, "Initially when I went to therapy, I did have my mom still on the pedestal and every time, I felt defensive immediately." The 'iCarly' star admitted that when she first started visiting a therapist, she rationalised her mother's treatment of her. "Immediately I went into, 'well she did this, but it's because she's such a good mom, it's because she wanted me to be successful, it's because she wanted me to have a better [life]'," Jennette told Drew Barrymore.
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Jenette continued, "I was so defensive, I didn't realize that I was at the time, but in retrospect, I see I was disclaiming every single thing that my mom did instead of just stating the reality or how I felt about it. I was more concerned with how to keep my mom looking good than I was with expressing my true emotional reality."
The 'Sam & Cat' star continued by saying that it took her "a long time to accept that my mom was not perfect let alone violent," and that those therapy sessions marked the beginning of her path to "recognize the reality of the pain that I’d suppressed for decades at that point."
Jennette, who gave up acting in 2017, grew in popularity again after publishing her infamously named memoir, 'I'm Glad My Mom Died', in which she documented the abuse she suffered from her mother as a child and even wrote about her hardships as a former child actor.
Jennette detailed several instances of abuse, one of which was her mother getting her to take a bath with her teenage brother when she was just 11 years old. She also put Jennete on a strict diet, which finally resulted in her needing a booster seat in the car at the age of 14. She also mentioned how Debra called her a "slut" when she started dating and lied about who her biological father was. Due to their dysfunctional relationship, the mother and daughter gradually grew apart, and Debra passed away from cancer in 2013.