As reported by TV Line, Paramount+ (the streaming service formerly known as CBS All Access) has picked up a reboot of Nickelodeon’s iCarly, with original stars Miranda Cosgrove, Jerry Trainor, and Nathan Kress all returning. The original show was about a teen girl and her wacky friends making a wacky web series, which is an oddly outdated concept these days since everything is sort of a web series (including this iCarly reboot), but the TV Line story doesn’t say how this will update the premise of the original show. Does Carly now host a real TV show? Is she rebooting her web series in the universe of the show? Is she now jaded and bitter about show business? Who knows!
One thing we do know, though, is that—despite Cosgrove’s character’s name being in the title—the original iCarly was kind of a two-hander, focusing on Carly herself and her best friend Sam, played by Jennette McCurdy. There’s no mention of McCurdy in the TV Line story, suggesting she won’t be involved in the reboot, and there are a few potential reasons for that: For starters, though no specific accusations were ever made public, iCarly creator Dan Schneider was rumored to have been accused of some “abusive behavior” by employees of his production company, and there was reportedly some “suspicion” of misconduct regarding “some of the younger stars on his shows.” That was from 2018 when Nickelodeon cut ties with Schneider, despite the fact that he had been a reliable hitmaker for the network for over two decades, and it sounds like he won’t be involved with this reboot at all.
Also, McCurdy has been fairly open about the issues she faced as a child actor, having revealed in recent years that she quit acting after struggling with alcohol abuse, an eating disorder, and the death of her mother. She’s now working on a podcast, Empty Inside, and a one-woman show. There were also stories circulating around the end of her spin-off show, Sam And Cat, that the relationship between McCurdy and Nickelodeon had soured for various reasons. In short, she might simply have no desire to go back to the iCarly world at this point in her life.