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Jennette McCurdy Stepped Away From Acting to Focus on Writing and Directing
Actress Jennette McCurdy, best known for her role in the teen sitcom iCarly, revealed that she made the decision to discontinue acting several years ago. In a 2021 episode of her podcast, Empty Inside, featuring guest Anna Faris, McCurdy shared that she is now concentrating on pursuing opportunities in writing and directing, alongside her ongoing podcast.
Reflecting on Past Roles: “Ashamed” of Previous Work
McCurdy openly confessed her sentiments regarding her past acting roles. “My experience with acting is, I’m so ashamed of the parts I’ve done in the past,” she stated. In her 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, McCurdy further detailed her experiences and elaborated on her feelings of dissatisfaction with her acting career. “I resent my career in a lot of ways. I feel so unfulfilled by the roles that I played and felt like it was the most cheesy, embarrassing,” she explained. Referring to her time on television shows from the ages of 13 to 21, she added, “by 15, I was already embarrassed. My friends at 15, they’re not like, ‘Oh, cool, you’re on this Nickelodeon show.’ It was embarrassing.”
Considering a Return: Exploring Acting on Her Own Terms
Despite her past experiences, McCurdy indicated she has not entirely ruled out a return to acting. In an October 2022 interview, she mentioned that writing her memoir has allowed her to consider revisiting acting in a new light. “I do feel like only through writing the book have I gotten to a place where I think there might be a way of exploring acting that doesn’t carry that baggage that I carried with me for so long,” McCurdy told E! News. She suggested that creating her own material might be the key to a potential comeback. “Maybe if I write something for myself. I think that’d really be maybe one of the only ways I could kind of try exploring it again.”