Jennifer Aniston is taking on one of her most emotionally charged roles yet — and she’s finding unexpected personal parallels along the way.
The Friends icon, 56, is set to star in and executive produce Apple TV’s adaptation of Jennette McCurdy’s bestselling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died. The series will bring McCurdy’s raw and darkly honest story to life, with Aniston playing a fictionalized version of McCurdy’s complicated mother.
“When it came across my desk, I was immediately intrigued and flattered and excited,” Aniston told PEOPLE. “It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to be pretty great to start shooting it.”
Aniston said she was deeply moved by McCurdy’s memoir, calling it “so beautifully written,” and describing the former iCarly star as “so special.” “The fact that she’s the young woman that she is, having lived that life, is nothing short of remarkable,” she added.
But there’s another reason the project hits close to home for the actress. “We have a lot in common,” Aniston revealed. “We had very similar moms.”
McCurdy’s mother, Debra, who died in 2013, was portrayed in her memoir as controlling and abusive, allegedly pushing her daughter into child stardom and unhealthy habits. Aniston has spoken candidly about her own strained relationship with her late mother, Nancy Dow, who passed away in 2016.
“She was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like,” Aniston told The Sunday Telegraph in 2018. “I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for.”
The actress also once described her childhood home as “destabilized and unsafe,” recalling that her mother’s obsession with beauty made her feel constantly judged. “She was very critical of me. Because she was a model — she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn’t,” she said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I never was. I honestly still don’t think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine.”
For McCurdy, 33, who’s long since stepped away from acting to focus on writing and directing, seeing her story adapted for television — with Aniston bringing her mother to life — marks a full-circle moment.
“I’m Glad My Mom Died,” which will also be produced by Bad Sisters creator Sharon Horgan and Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, is expected to begin filming later this year.
Apple hasn’t announced a release date yet — but with Jennifer Aniston and Jennette McCurdy teaming up to tell one of the most buzzed-about memoirs of the decade, it’s already shaping up to be one of TV’s most powerful and personal projects.