[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
The more we learn about what Jennette McCurdy suffered throughout her childhood, our hearts just break more and more for her…
The former child star appeared on a new episode of Red Table Talk on Wednesday to speak with hosts Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris about the horrors she faced at the hands of her abusive mother, Debra McCurdy. We didn’t expect to be shocked considering what the 30-year-old has revealed already, but… wow.
One of the instances she touched on included the claim her late mom insisted on still bathing Jennette herself for far too long — since she didn’t think they would do a good enough job herself. The iCarly alum recalled while reading an excerpt from her book, I’m Glad My Mom Died:
“I’ve dreaded showers for a while, five years or so, whenever it was that I started to feel uncomfortable that mom still showers me. She doesn’t mean to make me uncomfortable, I think. She says she has to shower me because I wouldn’t know how to shampoo and condition my own hair. She says maybe if it wasn’t so long or such a specific texture, she wouldn’t have to, but because it is those things and since she was a professional hairstylist, it just makes sense for her to do it.”
It did not make sense. Not at all.
Related: Jennette Reveals Brothers Support Following I’m Glad My Mom Died Book Release
But what’s worse, she revealed, was that Debra also forced her to shower with her 15-year-old brother Scott McCurdy when she was 11 years old:
“Mom showers me with Scotty sometimes. He’s almost 16 at this point. I get really embarrassed when she showers us together. I can tell he does too.”
Jennette then explained they would “look away from each other” while her older brother tried to distract himself by “drawing Pokémon on the fogged glass.” The Sam & Cat star went on to say:
“When she showers us together, mom says it’s because she’s got too much to do. Scotty asked if he could shower himself once. Mom sobbed and said she didn’t want him to grow up so he never asked again after that.”
Oof… Whenever Debra would bathe her alone, Jennette claimed her mom gave her a “breast” and “front butt exam” in order to check for cancerous lumps:
“I say OK, because I definitely don’t want cancer, and since mom’s had it and all, she would know if I do.”
It is beyond awful what the former child star allegedly had to go through for years.
When Jada asked how that terrible experience impacted her “dynamic” with her big brother, Jennette – who also has two other brothers, Dustin and Marcus McCurdy – shared that she still has a “beautiful bond” with each of her siblings. She said:
“I’m so close with all three of my brothers, and they have been a source of love and consistency in my life when there really wasn’t much anywhere else. Isn’t it amazing? We have such a beautiful bond, and there’s such an understanding there I think because of the things we went through together and the things we saw together.”
It is good to hear that these three are so close and can lean each other after everything they went through. You can watch the entire emotional Red Table Talk conversation (below):
[Image via Red Table Talk/Facebook, WENN]
