Jennette McCurdy Talks Dating an Older Man at 18 & How She Was a Virgin When They Met

Jennette McCurdy is opening up about how the age-gap relationship she entered into at the age of 18.

When the iCarly actress was only 18, she dated a man in his 30s and that relationship has served as the inspiration for her new novel “Half His Age.”

Jennette sat down for an interview on Alex Cooper‘s Call Her Daddy podcast and shed a lot of details about the relationship, including how they met at work, he would come over when he was drunk, and how she was a virgin when they met.

Keep reading to find out more…

Amid the comments, fans have been looking back at Jennette‘s dating history to try and figure out who she’s talking about.

You can read a transcript of the comments below.

Alex Cooper: How did you guys meet?

Jennette McCurdy: Through work. There’s nowhere to meet anybody else. All I did was work.

AC: You met at work, so you are a young actor at the time. Were you 17 when you met him? 16?

JM: I think I was 18 by the time he started working on the show. I think. I’m not sure about that. It’s possible I was younger, but I was at least eighteen. I was most likely 18.

AC: And how did this relationship start?

JM: A lot of hanging out on set, a lot of hanging around the writers room. We would hang out in the writers’ room after work. He would show me movies that he thought I would like, like “Dazed and Confused,” which I did not like, but I pretended to like. He would play me music that he liked, which I did not like, but I pretended to like. It’s also like, why do they all have terrible taste? They have such a bad taste.

AC: Or, Jennette, pause. Maybe it’s because they’re 30 f–king whatever and you’re 18, so there’s no way you’re gonna have the same taste. Maybe when you get to that age, you actually would “like that movie or that song, but how are you at 17, 18, gonna even-

JM: I still don’t like it. I still think these things are trash.

AC: You’re like, “Actually f–k that sh-t. F–k that sh-t,” but you know what I mean? Half the time, they’re showing you sh-t. You’re like, “Who? What?” and everyone else in the room that’s at age probably knows what that is, because they’re of the same decade.

JM: Yes. Yes, exactly.

AC: Okay, so you guys start hanging out, and then how does it progress to a relationship?

JM: He comes over. The feelings part of it, like us saying our feelings, I don’t remember the sort of nature of that, but I remember him coming over really drunk one night to my apartment. At this point, I’ve moved out of my mom’s place. I’m very new. Also, red flags all over. I’ve been living away from my mom for maybe two months, and I’m like, “Great, okay, a relationship, that’ll be great,” and he comes over and he has beer stains on his shirt, and he’s bumbling around and at this point in my life, I’ve never had a sip of alcohol, so I don’t understand how drunk he is. Now I go, “Okay, he was drunk off his ass,” but I didn’t know, did you drink one drink and that’s how drunk you are? How drunk is one drink? How drunk is 10 drinks? I had no frame of reference, so he just comes over really drunk and we make out. It’s a lot of dry humping and it’s that for months and I tell him, at that point, I was still very, I was no longer going to church, but I was still kind of tied to my Mormon roots and didn’t want sex before marriage and didn’t feel ready for that and I certainly was not, in terms of maturity, and so he and I just made out a lot and kind of dry humped a lot. Very high school.

AC: What do you remember about how you felt about the age gap?

JM: Thinking that I was mature, thinking that I was so smart that this could happen, and also, I hadn’t really felt a deep connection with anybody my age at that point yet. I had felt one connection with a friend, a female friend who I still love to this day, but she was seven years older than me, so not nearly the age gap that it was between he and I, but I remember thinking like, “Oh yeah, there’s just something about me that’s a little different. I’m special.” That’s what it felt like for me. “I’m special. I can connect with older people. Younger people aren’t on my wavelength.” Like, please.

AC: And how did he talk about it and justify it?

JM: Like that. Like that. Like f–king that. It was, you know, “You’re so mature. I can’t talk to anyone this way. I can’t believe how smart you are.” Are you kidding me? I was such an idiot. I’m so embarrassed. Also, how humiliating that he thought that was smart or even used it as being smart as a manipulation tactic because how stupid of him.

AC: You just obviously referenced that you were a virgin when you met him and you were wanting to wait for marriage. How did that impact the way that sex played a role in this relationship?

JM: Okay, this begs for a story. He, okay, so we had a plan. He had a girlfriend. Did I say this?

AC: No.

JM: He had a girlfriend. Okay. Felt a lot of guilt and shame about that for a long time.

AC: He had a girlfriend while you were seeing him?

JM: While I was seeing him, yes. While the dry hump make out sessions were happening, he had a girlfriend that he lived with.

AC: That he lived with?

JM: That he lived with.

AC: So where were you guys hanging out?

JM: My apartment.

AC: How did he explain the girlfriend to you?

JM: That he’s in a relationship and he, oh man, I can’t believe, yeah, it was tricky because it was initially positioned to me as sort of like, “I’m not going to leave her. I’m not going to leave her, but I want this.” Which is, I mean, come on, right? “I’m not going to leave, but I want to pursue this with you.” So it’s like, don’t get your hopes up. I can have my cake and eat it too, but you can’t. You’re going to not have any cake, but I get to have my cake and eat it too. And this went on for, I think we started, like the physical relationship began in maybe August. And by October, November, I was starting to feel like I can’t do this anymore. Like it’s too difficult to want something this bad to feel this at the disposal of someone else’s kind of whims and availabilities. And it’s these half hour pockets here and there. And like, I just have to be at his, every beck and call. And then when he calls and I’ll go, whatever. And it was just exhausting. It was exhausting and I couldn’t do it anymore. And then finally, once I say that, suddenly it’s, “I’m going to leave my girlfriend. I need to be with you. I’m going to leave my girlfriend.” Which what great messaging to send to an 18 year old. It’s like the whole, the whole process was just so twisted. And so I think, “Okay, is he going to leave his girlfriend? I hope he’s going to leave his girlfriend. I want to be with him.” Whatever. His plan is that he’s going to go home for Christmas break, which he actually does go home, but he’s going to say that the trip is longer than it is. And he’s actually going to be staying at his friend’s place. And I’m going to go stay with him at his friend’s place. We’re going to have a couple nights to ourselves, which I didn’t realize then, of course, I realize now was like the trial period, seeing, “Okay, does this actually work? Can I, do I actually have enough in common with an 18 year old to be with this person? What is this going to look like?” And so we spent those few days together. It went quote unquote well, and he was going to stay firm on leaving his girlfriend. Around this time, my mom had been hospitalized for having, she’d had a seizure. She was hospitalized and then she got out of the hospital and was going to come stay with me at my apartment. But he was going to come stay with me at my apartment because he was breaking up with his f–king girlfriend. So I can’t have my dying mother and my boyfriend she doesn’t know about and would never approve of at my apartment at the same time, right? We have a dilemma on our hands. So I’m going, okay, how do I like treat my dead mother with some, my dying mother, with some kind of respect and how do I keep the place for her? And how do I do this thing? And he’s saying, “I shouldn’t have broken up with her. It was the worst mistake of my life. This is, see, this is what I’m talking about.” Like you can’t, he uses the, “You can’t meet my needs” thing a lot. And so I go, “Okay, I’ll get us a hotel room. I’ll leave the apartment. I’ll tell my mom I’m hanging out with my friend,” which I did. And she was like very suspicious, very, didn’t matter if she was dying. She still had a mother’s instinct. She was still like, “Something’s not right about this. Who’s friend, who, how long?” So I ran us a room at the Sheraton Universal, right in Universal Studios. That was like my idea of like a good hotel.

AC: I also love that we’re not even acknowledging that, why is the 30 whatever year old not getting the hotel room? Why does the 30 year old, does he not have an apartment of his own? Did he, yes, he shared it with the girlfriend. Why didn’t he get the hotel?

JM: Thank you. Well, you know.

AC: Let the 18 year old do it.

JM: Let the 18 year old do it. Also, I was like, hopefully, maybe we can go on like, the Hogwarts ride.

AC: He’s like, “What’s Hogwarts?” You’re like, “Oh, right. Sh-t. You don’t know what I like, and I don’t know what you like. Pretend.” Oh, my God. Yeah. Okay. So you’re at the Sheraton.

JM: He’s completely drunk again doing the bumbling around thing that I didn’t know what that was indication of. And we go into the hotel room and he asks me for a blow job, which I don’t know what that is because I was raised Mormon and because I was homeschooled and I didn’t f–king know. He explains to me what it is and I’m like, “That sounds kind of weird.” I’m nervous to do this. He’s like, “I’ll guide you through it. I’ll guide you through it,” whatever. He does. And then he’s like, “I’m gonna come” and then it’s squirts in my mouth. I’m like, “What was that? What was that? Something came out.” I thought, did he pee in my mouth? What the f–k just happened? I did not know what come was. He explains. And then that was sort of, that was my entry point into, you know, a real form of sexual activity. And it was, you know, now it’s funny, but at the time it was really uncomfortable and I didn’t, it was difficult to kind of regroup and figure out, well, what was that exactly?