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Once America’s sweetheart, Jennifer Aniston is about to get really, really nasty playing the titular mom in the upcoming adaptation of I’m Glad My Mom Died. Jennette McCurdy knows a little bit about being America’s sweetheart herself—though her Nickelodeon character Sam Puckett always had a little edge, her memoir about child stardom explores the pressures and infantilization she experienced as the longtime face of a kids’ network. McCurdy will serve as co-showrunner for the Apple TV+ series adaptation, which details how she was pushed into the spotlight by her abusive mother.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the show will follow “the codependent relationship between an 18-year-old actress in a hit kids’ show, and her narcissistic mom who relishes in her identity as a starlet’s mother.” McCurdy will adapt her own bestselling book alongside Ari Katcher (Ramy, Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show). In addition to starring, Aniston will executive produce alongside a pretty star-studded lineup of producers, including Jerrod Carmichael, Sharon Horgan for her Merman Productions banner, and Margot Robbie’s husband Tom Ackerly for their LuckyChap banner.
I’m Glad My Mom Died is a searing but still humorous memoir about McCurdy’s time as a child actor and her complicated relationship with her mother Debra McCurdy, who died in 2013. In addition to her mom’s abuses, she also wrote about years of struggle with an eating disorder and troubling experiences behind the scenes of her shows iCarly and Sam & Cat (alluding to some inappropriate conduct from ousted Nick boss Daniel Schneider, whom she refers to as “The Creator”). While promoting her book—in which she writes she wanted to quit Hollywood, but her mother pushed her to keep acting—McCurdy admitted that she was embarrassed about her old Nick shows, and was glad she altered her path rather than continue to do “sitcom after soul-sucking sitcom.” Though she expressed some hope that there are better protections for child stars today than there were for her, she added, “I do hope that if there are parents that are considering putting their kids in acting, I hope if they read the book…they don’t.”
