Jennette McCurdy on female rage and forgiving your past self
In a Q interview, the author and former Nickelodeon star discusses her debut novel, Half His Age
Almost four years after the release of her bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy is back in the literary spotlight, this time with her harrowing debut novel Half His Age.
The story follows Waldo, a 17-year-old Alaskan girl who plunges headfirst into a poisonous relationship with her 40-year-old married creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy.
In an interview with Q guest host Talia Schlanger, the author and former Nickelodeon star says she felt compelled to write the book after reflecting on unprocessed feelings about her past. While Half His Age isn’t based on her own life, she was partly inspired by a toxic relationship she had with a man in his 30s when she was 18.
“I'm aware some people may project me onto the book,” McCurdy says. “I really hope that Waldo can be seen as her own character — I think she deserves that — and I hope that Half His Age can be perceived as its own story … but definitely, I was in an age-gap relationship with somebody significantly older than me. It was my first foray into relationships. What I do think informed Half His Age was the unprocessed anger that I felt toward that relationship.”
From McCurdy’s perspective, female rage — the uninhibited expression of women's anger — is a visceral response to exploitation. It can be a force for destruction or transformation, but she sees it primarily as a “useful” tool for women who are vulnerable.
“To me, female rage is having your boundaries violated over and over and over and over again, at times when you don't have the language [or] the wherewithal to advocate for yourself,” she says. “Maybe you're scared to advocate for yourself, maybe you don't have the clarity yet to advocate for yourself. And then that's compounded over years until eventually the rage starts to bubble up and crop up and come out.”
One of the central themes in Half His Age is the relationship between sexuality and power, and how those two things can be conflated.
“I think sexuality can often be mistaken for power, especially when we're young,” she says. “Something I really wanted to show in the book is how as a young woman … you're still vulnerable, you’re still naive. ”
Waldo represents who we've all been at one point or another, as women specifically.- Jennette McCurdy
In the book, McCurdy not only shows the ugly and disgusting side of sex, but also its alluring and seductive side.
“I wanted to show sex in a sexy way, and not just the disgusting way, because that is how Waldo, the protagonist, views it,” she says. “I think Waldo is in so many ways a reliable narrator. She's whip-smart, really sees through the bullshit in the world surrounding her, but [she] has this glaring blind spot that we all, of course, can see…. She makes a lot of choices that I suspect will make a reader cringe, will maybe upset a reader, will aggravate them … but she is making these decisions as a very spiky and complicated young woman.”
As for what readers take away from the book, McCurdy says she hopes Waldo’s story presents an opportunity to forgive our past selves for our mistakes.
“I do think Waldo represents who we've all been at one point or another, as women specifically,” she says. “I think we all have those moments from our past that we cringe about, and that we're humiliated by, and that we wish had never happened, and of course we regret, but I hope that maybe she starts some conversations and leads us to finding some more self-compassion for who we were at one point.”
The full interview with Jennette McCurdy is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Jennette McCurdy produced by Jane van Koeverden.