please welcome jeanette mccurdy jeanette mccurdy welcome to the daily show i feel so short my feet aren't touching oh that's that's fine as long as like you can you can swing them around yeah it's as long as you enjoy it oh yeah i can lower the desk as well if you'd like this this is good okay good okay i can't actually do it i'm glad you asked me to do it um welcome to the show and congratulations on writing a book that i think for many people is seen as not just something funny not just a stor
y that's interesting but in many ways a cathartic exploration of how we see the relationships that we have with many of our parents our caregivers whoever it was in our world because you wrote a book entitled i'm glad my mom died and it is a massive hit so two questions one did you hate your mom and two does everybody [Laughter] no i definitely don't hate my mom i think she's a really complicated and nuanced person and i try to kind of articulate her to the best of my ability and all her many sh
ades and colors to me her humor is really uh she could say things that were so wild and at times abusive but she just had a certain cadence and a rhythm that was so humorous so i tried to capture that um but i certainly didn't hate her and i think i think that's why it was so important for me to write this book because getting to the place where i was finally glad and relieved that she was dead you know it took me so long to be able to accept that um reality and i also think that's something tha
t people you i didn't hear anybody talking about i didn't hear anybody saying you know that the sort of honest reality of what their experience with their with their parent was if they had a similar one it feels like a thing that you can't say because society doesn't accept it it's just you have to keep moms on a pedestal and we all have to have the same experience and that just wasn't mine so it felt even more important to express it in the book you you go through your entire journey many peopl
e you know in america and some parts of the world will remember you from icarly you were this massive child star and on the camera you were all smiles you made people laugh everybody enjoyed what you were doing as soon as you read through the book you realized you you were suffering you were experiencing trauma it was really abusive in in how you were doing what you were doing it feels like in many ways you were living your mom's dream and she was making you do this yeah i would love to know how
you did it like did you have a switch did you have a did you compartmentalize because you you talk about it in the book but you could you could never tell you could never tell on screen what you were going through no no so my mom always wanted to be an actress her dream was to be famous uh and she would recount sort of these tales of how her parents wouldn't let her she would camp out in front of donny osmond's house bring him like posters um chris knight who played peter brady in a brady bunch
she swore like oh they had a relationship i think that was not true um chris knight if you're watching please let me know if my mom actually had a relationship with you um but so she she was always fascinated with kind of hollywood and the aura and the romance as she saw it and so she put me in acting when i was six to kind of give i think in my eyes it was to live vicariously through me and to fulfill her dream of what she had always wanted but it seems like she subjected you to a nightmare ye
s because you were in a world where it's supposed to be fun you know you're making kids television and yeah and yet it it seems pretty horrible i also wonder if this is the relationship of many child stars or do you know was this isolated or do you think this is a lot more normal than we'd like to admit i think it's way more common than anyone would care to admit i know just from my experience of going into auditions countless times i'd have like 103 feet for my mom would be having me chug gator
ade i'd be walking to like pretend to be a homeless child which is just already so kind of messed up as it is then there's these this you know dozens of other girls lined up to also try and be this homeless child and the moms are like eyeing each other and like oh i hope my daughter's better being homeless than yours and it's like this is so what is this world it's so weird uh but i i am able to now kind of look back and see the the humor in it i think it is a very absurd reality but i do think
there's a lot of inherent um ironic camera there i think what you've done in the book is precisely that you've looked back and you've seen the humor you you use the humor because this book without the humor is a devastating tale of a young child who is putting a child it really seems it would be so awful oh my god that would be awful i think it just would be it would be a lot harder for people to read i think it would be it would be painful because it is still the real thing you know i i wouldn'
t even think of it as a pity grab but but the humor is is is a coping mechanism it's a tool you're processing your life through there's a point in the book where i i find myself reading the stories of your mom yeah understanding the complicated world that she existed in yes but then wondering you know like how you see her like like did you forgive her were you able to let it all go do you still do you still hold some of those feelings like what has your journey been oh my god what a big good que
stion that's such a deep like this is what i spent 10 years in therapy to be able to now say on the daily show that's so cool that's really awesome um well i'm glad you initially you know you're speaking kind of the humor and i do think it's a great coping mechanism and and i don't i try not to use it as a defense mechanism i use it that way for a long time initially when i was first kind of trying to grapple with everything and i think that led to really unfunny choices and my my sense of humor
is just sort of overcompensatory and kind of flailing and obnoxious to be honest um but i think finding humor in those really intense moments and that those tragedies can bring gravity where it's necessary i hope i've done that um with my mom i i haven't gotten to a place of forgiveness and i was trying to get to a place of forgiveness for so long in therapy i would uh sort of plead almost with my therapist like why am i not able to get to this place what is what's wrong with me that i'm not ab
le to forgive my mom for this abuse why am i so terrible that i can't get to get to that place and she eventually said you know jeanette what if you just kind of dropped uh forgiveness and didn't make that your goal because that's you still trying to do your mom's work i couldn't yeah right i mean it that's exactly my reaction i um to aaron yeah wow yeah it's um yeah it's it's a journey that i think far too many people have been i think a lot of the success of the book has been that obviously it
's well written obviously it's it's fantastically told but it is a very complicated topic how do you address the lack of love or the lack of parenting that you were supposed to get from that figure because as you say mom is supposed to be this this you know this god this icon of everything dad in some ways as well but not the same and yet you're in a world where you're going oh no it's true you know people be like oh dad my dad was okay but mom is untouchable or even with dads you can be like oh
my dad never showed up and we were like oh my neither uh-huh and then it's totally normal but i feel like with moms it is very very much um this there's this pedestal there on when you when you broach this topic when you started thinking about it were you worried that people would turn on you um i felt even if they did it was a message worth sharing i really i really mean that wow i love that thanks i really do that's because that's a brave stance to take because a lot of people be like how dar
e you talk about your mom like yes yeah it's actually it's it's it's so crazy how i mean everything gets memified and you know there was a there was a post i saw online where someone was trying to chastise everybody for talking about the queen you know in like just going like we're dead we're glad this monarchy is ending in some way and someone was like replace you think it's funny try and replace the queen with your mom and see how funny it is and someone put a picture of your book up and then
it was like i'm glad the queen died and it feels like no but it feels like that is it feels like that's what the book is dealing with is you dealing with the idea of a mom and how that how that competes or conflicts with your actual mom yes oh my god yeah that should be on the back flap i can write it i wish you would you've shared your story with us you've gone through a world now you are back in the world of entertainment in a very different way you're behind the camera you're directing you're
writing you've got a podcast it's it's interesting because it's a world that was so toxic to you and now you've come back in a different way do you ever worry that it may suck you back in and how do you prevent yourself from going back into that space of feeling like you're defined by the everythingness that you hated once oh my god i'm i'm so can i just say i respect you so much i this is so cool i'm so happy to be here truly like this is amazing thank you very much um i i have been scared of
that there have been a few times when i've done some uh some press that shall not be named where it's so bizarre because i'm like hearing the pre-roll of you know they show like the clip of me from the past or whatever and and it's so dramatic it's like mccurdy vanished from the spotlight after her traumatic childhood with the trauma and the devastating it's like geez can we calm down and then i'm like walked out to this you know to this like cold domineering kind of set and then there's the jou
rnalist and there's three inches of makeup on the guy's face and it's just like you know it does feel kind of um it feels easy to lose sight of reality in these environments and so i really try to keep myself grounded and stay on top of you know therapy and being in touch with things that really are good touchstones and grounding tools for me because i do not want to um get lost in it but also i will say i trust that i won't i don't think i had the tools before to not get lost in it and to not f
eel sort of caught up in the whirlwind of showbiz but now i feel like you know what there are some elements that are really cool about it like this and then there are some that aren't and that's fine i can use my own discernment and and just be grateful for the good experiences well we're grateful for you thank you for having the book thank you wonderful thank you so much thank you so much i'm glad my mom died it's available now whenever you buy a book jeanette mccarty everybody [Music] you
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