Jennifer Aniston Compared Her Mom To Jennette McCurdy’s

If we’re talking about complicated relationships between moms and daughters, Jennifer Aniston can relate.

The Friends alum is set to executive produce and star in a TV adaptation of Jennette McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, and ahead of its release, Aniston told Deadline that she and McCurdy have “a lot in common” — specifically, that they “had very similar moms.”

McCurdy’s 2022 memoir was a commercial and critical success, telling the heart-wrenching story of the iCarly star’s traumatic relationship with her overbearing mother until her death in 2013. The former child star wrote about being forced into acting at a young age, developing a long-term eating disorder at her mother’s hands, the exploitation she faced during her career, and how it impacted her. The book was picked up for adaptation by Apple TV+, and the streamer announced in July that Aniston would be attached to star as McCurdy’s mom.

In an interview published on Oct. 17, Aniston told People that she was “pretty much immediately intrigued and flattered and excited” when she was approached to play the mother character. “It’s going to be wonderful,” she said of the series. “It’s going to be pretty great to start shooting it.”

Aniston called the memoir “so beautifully written,” and also showered admiration onto McCurdy, saying, “The fact that she’s the young woman that she is, having lived that life, is nothing short of remarkable.”

Aniston was estranged from her own mother, model Nancy Dow, who died in 2016. She’s opened up about the similarly fraught relationship she had with her mother and recalled growing up in a “household that was destabilized and felt unsafe” in a 2020 Interview conversation with Sandra Bullock.

“She was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like,” she told The Sunday Telegraph in 2018 (via People). “I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for.”

McCurdy is thrilled to have Aniston portraying her mom. After the casting announcement in July, she posted article screenshots on Instagram, writing, “so excited + honored that i get to create, write, and showrun this show and work with this incredible group of people,” tagging Aniston, fellow executive producer Sharon Horgan, LuckyChap, and AppleTV+.

As for when we’ll be able to watch the screen version of the memoir, we know that McCurdy will serve as the showrunner, writer, and executive producer, and the series will have 10 episodes, but no release date has been shared yet.