{"id":244632,"date":"2026-01-21T16:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/244632\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:47:09","slug":"jennette-mccurdy-on-real-life-inspiring-her-novel-half-his-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/244632\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennette McCurdy on Real Life Inspiring Her Novel “Half His Age”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennette McCurdy has always had a way of capturing our attention. <\/p>\n

As a teen who became a regular fixture on Nickelodeon via TV shows like iCarly, Sam & Cat, and Zoey 101, McCurdy served up laughs and over-the-top antics meant to charm a young, digitally locked-in generation. Years later, she captured the zeitgeist in a new way with the bestselling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died<\/a>, a flinchingly honest and raw recollection of being raised by a controlling and emotionally abusive mother while being coerced into her career as a child star. <\/p>\n

Now, with the publication of her fiction debut Half His Age<\/a>, out now via Ballantine Books Group, McCurdy is stirring up the conversation once again, this time with a bold and brash age-gap \u201cromance\u201d meant to provoke conversation\u2014but never preach. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve written so much fiction over the course of my life,\u201d McCurdy shares from her home in Los Angeles. \u201cEven as a kid, I wrote so many short stories and screenplays and even a fantasy novel that included a three-decker bus where I literally just ripped off the night bus from Harry Potter\u2014but I called it the Cherbit Bus and it was multicolored, so I thought I was in the clear.\u201d <\/p>\n

She continues, \u201cI quit acting at 24 and fully threw myself into writing. It\u2019s very natural for me to write fiction. While I was in the revision process for a different book, [the concept for] Half His Age would not stop pushing itself up on me. Finally, I said fine\u2014I will put aside this other project for a week and then I\u2019ll refocus and recommit to that other novel. What wound up happening was that 30 days later, I had a full first draft of Half His Age and my whole body knew this was the one that I had to do. It\u2019s the one that had to be written.\u201d <\/p>\n

McCurdy fully immersed herself in the world of her protagonist Waldo, a 17-year-old Alaska teenager who\u2019s blunt, sarcastic, and eats Cheetos in bed as she succumbs to a Gen Z-imposed fast-fashion shopping addiction. She also has a voracious sex drive, and when she falls for her new creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy, he\u2019s all too eager to blow up his marriage and his family for the sake of feeding her suburbia-induced boredom. The power imbalance and taboo inherent in relationships between high school students and teachers have long been fodder for the screen. Who could forget Aria and Ezra during Pretty Little Liars\u2019 early-aughts run or Pacey and his teacher, Tamara Jacobs, on Dawson\u2019s Creek? In Half His Age, McCurdy dares readers to think deeper beyond the frisson of danger and the snap judgements of seeing people do the wrong thing. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t write high-concept projects\u2014I write from character first. Waldo was really the seed\u2014I wanted her to be as multilayered and messy and as spiky as possible,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I read a lot of 17-year-olds or see them in film or TV shows, they can have this put-on spunk or sense of self-deprecation that undermines their experience and makes their experience more convenient for the reader or the watcher. I wanted to write a character that was as complicated as I know 17-year-olds to be.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"cover<\/p>\n

Ballatine Books<\/p>\n

McCurdy emphasizes that the book doesn\u2019t romanticize Waldo and Mr. Korgy\u2019s relationship in any way. Even with explicit depictions of sex throughout the pages, she always drives back to the story\u2019s core themes of a young woman\u2019s lust and unexplored inner rage. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe sex writing runs the gamut from being very disgusting to being very sexy,\u201d the author adds. \u201cIt was important that the sex at times did feel sexy because this is through the eyes of the 17-year-old girl\u2014and at times it does feel that way for her. Of course, the reader knows a context that Waldo might not be entirely able to see from her vantage point, but I did not want to get moralistic at any point. I did not want to get finger-waggy. I think that would\u2019ve been a disservice to the book and to the reader.\u201d<\/p>\n

It helps of course that McCurdy\u2019s own teenage upbringing was anything but conventional. The author had previously revealed that she also experienced her own imbalanced relationship years ago, dating a man in his 30s when she was 18 on the set of one of the television shows she worked on. She\u2019s since admitted she views the relationship as \u201cembarrassing\u201d<\/a> and can now recognize the countless red flags surrounding the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever I write has to come from a deeply, deeply personal place. It has to really emotionally affect me in order for me to frankly feel that I have something worth a reader\u2019s time,\u201d she says. \u201cSo, I did have a lot of unprocessed anger about experiences from my past, but that\u2019s really just the jumping off point. But of course, Waldo\u2019s entirely her own character and her world is entirely its own. I understand that some people may project me onto this in some way, but I do hope that people can read the book on its own merits and see it as its own piece of art, too.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"woman<\/p>\n

Victoria Stevens<\/p>\n

Half His Age also explores complicated mother-daughter dynamics and why we relive and repeat the generational trauma that often follows us. Waldo is raised by a nameless, single mother who often is more committed to keeping a steady rotation of bum boyfriends than maintaining an authentic bond with her only child. <\/p>\n

If anything, outside of the sex and shock of Half His Age, the book paints a vivid picture of all that we dismiss when it comes to the complexity of a young woman’s desire. <\/p>\n

\u201cNinety-nine percent of the readership is going to be significantly older than Waldo, but we’ve all been that girl and we all know her,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can look back on that self and process her in a different way than we were able to then and validate her and honor her in a way that we couldn’t then. I hope the book will open these conversations with women who have been Waldo and to help find some healing, growth, closure, processing around that phase of our lives.\u201d <\/p>\n

Accepting and acknowledging the truth is often uncomfortable, of course, and McCurdy has managed to find her voice as a writer through embracing life’s most challenging growing pains. While she\u2019s stated she\u2019s said all that she needs to say regarding her relationship with her late mother in I\u2019m Glad My Mom Died, audiences will experience the story in a new way when it\u2019s adapted into an upcoming Apple TV+ series with Jennifer Aniston at the helm. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a very clear vision for it, and I really want to make sure that everybody on the team understands and appreciates this vision. And also, I\u2019m not in any rush,\u201d McCurdy says succinctly about the upcoming adaptation. \u201cI know the connection that people have to my memoir and I don\u2019t take it for granted, and I really want to make sure that by the time this winds up on people\u2019s screens, it\u2019s a show that deserves their time.\u201d <\/p>\n

With each of her books, McCurdy continues to lean into the uncomfortable conversations that end up leading the discourse; but there\u2019s a difference for her in crafting conversation versus writing solely for controversy\u2019s sake. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the book will shine a light on and create conversations around female rage and how it\u2019s not wrong,\u201d she says. \u201cBut in terms of controversy\u2026 I don\u2019t write from that place. I can’t help it if the truth is controversial.\u201d <\/p>\n

Half His Age: A Novel<\/p>\n

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