Jennette McCurdy talks about her “creepy” romance with an older man when she was 18 on the Call Her Daddy podcast.
On the Call Her Daddy podcast on January 7, 2026, Jennette McCurdy, who used to be on iCarly and is now 33, talked about a bad relationship with a big age difference that she had when she was a teenager. She was about 18 when she started dating a man in his 30s whose name she doesn’t remember. They met at work, and she said the relationship was “exhausting” and full of red flags. The romance happened at the same time as her mother Debra’s terminal illness, which put a lot of stress on McCurdy because he pretended to like his music and movies like Dazed and Confused to make him happy.
The older man was living with another woman when their affair started, but he pushed McCurdy to be intimate with him and then insisted on staying at her apartment even though she had to take care of her. McCurdy remembered him coming over drunk one night and often saying that she couldn’t “meet his needs.” This made her suggest hotel rooms in the middle of the chaos. He praised her a lot, even calling her “mature,” but now she thinks it was creepy control and feels embarrassed and powerless in hindsight.
After her mother died in 2013, the relationship ended. McCurdy called her ex a “f–king loser” and wondered how an adult could be interested in someone so young. Half His Age, her first novel, comes out on January 20, 2026. It is based on her past traumas, such as family problems and pressures from Nickelodeon. Since then, McCurdy has put her mental health first, turning down an iCarly reboot for the same pay so she can focus on getting better.
