Jennette McCurdy
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
What emotion do you understand better than all the others?
I'm trying to like literally name any other emotion and anger is the only one coming up for me.
Let it go! Let it out!
It's just anger, baby. I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Jeanette McCurdy.
To me, work is where I take risks and where I say the things that maybe we're not supposed to say out loud. There's no instinct towards safety for me in writing. There never really has been. It's so the opposite for me.
If you're a young adult who spent a lot of your childhood watching Nickelodeon, then you know Jeanette McCurdy as Sam Puckett from the hit shows iCarly and Salmon Cat. If not, you still might recognize the title of Jeanette's 2022 memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died. Grim title, excellent book. Turns out this former child star grew up into a writer able to capture some of the darkest parts of human nature with unflinching honesty and devastating humor. Her new book, her first novel, is called Half His Age. And I am so happy to welcome Jeanette McCurdy to Wildcard. Hi.
Hi, Rachel. I'm so happy to be here.
Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to talk with you. Round one. You ready? Yeah. Yeah. Memories. First three cards. Hold up three random cards from our deck and you pick one, two, or three. Let's go one. One. Where would you go when you wanted to feel safe as a kid?
Wow. What an amazing question. It couldn't be more timely. I've really been exploring this theme of safety recently, as in the past sort of three weeks. I do a lot of reflecting toward the end of the year. I really reflect on the themes I want to bring into the new year and what I want to just really consider deeply. And for me, currently, it's safety and finding safety in my body. Because I think from childhood I did I just did not my environment felt so unsafe and so chaotic that my little body was working overtime to try to find safety but was really just harboring a lot of anxiety and a lot of tension and you know had so many little habits and rituals and struggled with OCD. And I think all of that was just a result of not really feeling safe.
So now as a grown woman, I'm really honestly just beginning to find that safety in myself.
That is really interesting that that word in particular would be something that you're thinking a lot about in this moment. Yeah, I kind of can't believe it. Yeah. So we should just say for people who don't know and who haven't read your book, safety was a big idea. The lack of safety when you were growing up because you had not just a difficult, challenging relationship with your mom, it was an abusive relationship. So safety would have been not something you were super familiar with growing up. But was there a place that you felt safe?
Thank you for filling in the gaps there. There are two places that come to mind strangely. So I grew up Mormon or LDS as they call it, Latter-day Saints. You know, as complicated of a relationship as I eventually grew to have with LDS, The religion no longer is not a practicing Mormon at all. But I felt safety in those walls and I felt camaraderie and I felt security. And then the other place sort of, I was going to say for the opposite end of the spectrum, but it's kind of the same end of the spectrum, Disneyland.
I'm so glad you brought up Disneyland because it is like this through line in everything you make, Jeanette. Disneyland references.
Thank you for noticing. If there's any theme that's going to carry through my work for all time, it will be Disney.
I love it. Why? What felt safe about Disneyland? I think, what was it?
Because I feel very unsafe at Disneyland. As do most people, I feel like. There's so many people. There's so many lines, so many mouse ears. When I grew up at Disney, I was not privy to the crowds that it has now. It just was a different time. And so I was used to a very sort of empty space.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:46
2
How did Jennette McCurdy describe finding safety as a child and where did she feel it?
5:46–13:39
3
Why is Disneyland a recurring safe-place motif in Jennette's life and work?
13:39–20:39
4
What did Jennette imagine adulthood would be like as a kid and how does she view it now?
20:39–31:34
5
When did Jennette finally find a peer group who really understood her and how did writing help?
31:34–39:20
6
What is Half His Age about and why did Jennette write a novel about a student-teacher dynamic?
39:20–47:58