Jennette McCurdy is revisiting a chapter of her life that she now describes as unsettling, unbalanced, and deeply draining.
Speaking this week ahead of the January 20 release of her debut novel Half His Age, the former iCarly star reflected on a relationship she entered as a teenager with a man in his 30s — a dynamic she says left her feeling powerless and confused. McCurdy, now 33, discussed the experience during an appearance on Call Her Daddy, framing it less as scandal and more as a hard reckoning with how little agency she had at the time.
“I was most likely 18,” McCurdy said, recalling that she met the man at work. From the outset, the imbalance was clear. He curated the relationship on his terms — introducing her to films and music he liked, tastes she admits she pretended to share. It was performance disguised as intimacy, a young woman trying to keep pace with an older man who set the rhythm.
Complicating matters, the man was already in a long-term relationship and living with another woman when their involvement began. The relationship unfolded just before the death of McCurdy’s mother, Debra, a period already marked by emotional strain and instability.
“It was just exhausting,” McCurdy said, describing an incident in which the man showed up drunk at her apartment. Red flags, she noted, were everywhere — though she didn’t yet have the language or distance to name them as such.
When the man eventually left his partner, the pressure intensified. As McCurdy was caring for her ailing mother, he insisted on staying with her, forcing her into impossible decisions. Unwilling to have her dying mother and a secret boyfriend under the same roof, McCurdy booked a hotel room instead — choosing one near Universal Studios because, as she put it, that felt like a “good hotel” to her then. The detail lands with quiet force: a teenager’s idea of adulthood colliding with circumstances far beyond her years.
She also spoke candidly about sexual pressure within the relationship, admitting she lacked even basic knowledge about sex at the time. What she now recounts with dark humour was, then, disorienting and difficult to process. The man, she said, alternated that pressure with flattery, calling her “mature” and praising her intelligence — language McCurdy now recognises as part of the control.
Looking back, she describes the experience as one that stripped her of agency. She eventually ended the relationship after her mother’s death in 2013, and her assessment today is blunt. She called her ex a “f—king loser,” adding that the idea of an adult dating a teenager now strikes her as plainly “creepy.”
McCurdy’s account isn’t framed as confession or provocation. It’s a post-mortem. There’s no appetite for sensationalism, only clarity earned with time. Her upcoming novel promises to explore similar terrain — power, age, vulnerability — with the same unsentimental eye.
In an industry that has often blurred boundaries and rewarded silence, McCurdy’s voice remains notable precisely because it is measured. She isn’t rewriting history. She’s simply naming it.
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Last modified: January 9, 2026
