Jennette McCurdy says her mum forced her to have showers with her brother when she was 11
Jennette McCurdy has said her mother forced her to have showers with her teenage brother when she was 11, having opened up about her notoriously difficult childhood in a new interview.
McCurdy, best known for playing Sam Puckett in Nickelodeon sitcom iCarly, has spoken about her youth as a successful child star – and the control from late mum Debra that came with it – in her new memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died.
The 30-year-old appeared on a recent episode of Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith and Adrienne Banfield’s Red Table Talk to discuss revelations from the book further, including alleged showering habits her mum enforced.
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Pinkett Smith said one of the ‘heartbreaking’ moments in the book was when McCurdy revealed her mother forced her and her brother to shower together.
“You were, what, 11?” Pinkett Smith asked in horror, to which McCurdy replied: “Yeah.”
McCurdy proceeded to recite the passage from the memoir, saying she ‘dreaded showers’, as her mother still showered her – arguing that it made sense for her to wash her hair as she was a professional hair stylist.
McCurdy went on: "Mom showers me with Scotty sometimes. He's almost 16 at this point. I get really embarrassed when she showers us together. I can tell he does too."
She said she and Scotty would ‘usually just look away from each other’, adding that her brother would ‘distract himself by drawing Pokemon on the fogged glass’.
McCurdy continued: "When she showers us together, Mom says it's because she's got too much to do. Scott asked if he could shower himself on his own once. Mom sobbed and said that she didn't want him to grow up so he never asked again after that."
She said that, regardless of whether or not her brother was there, Debra would give her a ‘breast and front butt exam’, saying the latter was what her mum called her ‘private parts’.
“She says she wants to make sure I don’t have any mysterious lumps or bumps because those could be cancer,” McCurdy read.
When Pinkett Smith asked how this affected McCurdy’s dynamic with her brother, she replied: “I’m so close with all three of my brothers, and they have been such a source of love and support and consistency in my life – where there really wasn’t much anywhere else.”
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Topics: Celebrity
Jess Hardiman