Jennette McCurdy struggled with an eating disorder, her food-obsessed ‘iCarly’ character

If you’ve seen a Nickelodeon sitcom icarly You probably remember that back in the day, Jennette McCurdy’s character Sam Puckett was known for her constant chatter about food.

Much of Sam’s personality centers around her eating habits, with the teenager regularly commenting on how hungry she is and brandishing her famous “butter socks” over the show’s six seasons. was

In fact, Sam’s food pranks have become so famous that Nickelodeon’s official “Rewind” YouTube page now has several compilations devoted to all the jokes in action.

However, as the actor herself eventually revealed, Jennette was essentially the polar opposite of her on-screen character, and actually had an incredibly complicated relationship with food in real life. rice field.

Jennette was just 15 years old when she got the job icarlyhave discussed for years about going through multiple eating disorders during adolescence.

Not only did Debra push her to pursue an acting career from an early age, but Jennette was shamelessly obsessed with her looks and taught her how to limit calories when she was only 11 years old. I wrote that I taught

By the time Jennette started acting icarlyshe was already dealing with anorexia, which made the thought of her acting gig as Sam Puckett all the more uncomfortable.

Now in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Jennette, 30, who opened up about the reality of her time on the Nickelodeon show, found it difficult to portray a character who was “obsessed with food.” I admitted that

“At the time, I was struggling with a life-threatening eating disorder, so my personality struggled to focus on food,” she said.

Describing her past as “genuinely tragic,” Jennette revealed that she now finds the irony of the whole thing “hilarious.”

“Now I think that’s the true gift of Comedy Gold,” she said. There’s something really tragic about that. It’s hilarious.

Plus, just a few weeks ago, Jennette revealed that she actually asked icarly Producers “dialed back” to the food-related jokes surrounding her character, but she couldn’t explain her reasons to them.

“My character was eating constantly, which made me very anxious,” she told The Washington Post on Aug. 5.

“I kind of reasoned like, ‘I think there’s a lot more to Sam as a character, and I think she goes a lot deeper than this,'” she said. , I couldn’t confront my eating disorder on my own, so of course I couldn’t say, “Hey, I actually really suffer from this.”

Jennette recalled being consistently approached by fans joking about her character’s eating habits. ?” I yelled. You’ll either face the actor in public or randomly give her a snowball dessert, both referencing some of Sam Puckett’s most famous storylines.

Of course, this made Jennette even more uneasy. I didn’t know if I was there, but I felt like people were going straight into me with all the anxiety and trauma I was having.

Elsewhere in her memoir, Jennette recounts several other experiences. icarly On set, such as feeling incredibly uncomfortable while kissing her co-star Nathan Kress.

Nathan played Freddy Benson, Sam’s eventual on-screen boyfriend, and the two first kissed early in the show. However, she explains that she didn’t want her first kiss to be on camera.

“I feel sluggish. I don’t flinch. My body is rejecting my mind,” she wrote. “My mind was like, ‘Who cares that this is your first kiss, that your first kiss is in front of the camera. And get over it. Do what you’re told.'”

“My body is saying, ‘No, I don’t want this.’ I don’t want my first kiss to be like this. I want it to be a real first kiss, not a TV show kiss,” she added, noting that she was a “creator.” Before we go into detail about the unnamed person we’re calling out, many have speculated it’s Dan Schneider, the show’s producer. head movements ”.