Jennette McCurdy Tells Drew Barrymore She Was Blindsided When She Found Out Her Dad Wasn’t Her Biological Father

Almost one month after it was first released on YouTube, Drew Barrymore’s raw interview with Jennette McCurdy finally made its way to The Drew Barrymore Show. While speaking of McCurdy’s book, I’m Glad My Mom Died, which was released in August, the former iCarly actress opened up about the moment she found out the dad she had grown up with wasn’t her biological father.

“I remember feeling like I got the wind knocked out of me. My mouth was really dry,” McCurdy said of the moment he made the revelation a year and a half after her mother died in 2013. “I think I hugged him and his then-girlfriend sort of, like, joined the hug, and she was well-meaning, but I was like, ‘Okay, this is just a hug between us two.'”

She went on to admit that she “always felt he had been disengaged and disconnected,” adding that while the news was “shocking,” she also began to make excuses for him. She explained that she would say, “Oh, well that’s why he was so absent all those years.” But what McCurdy seemed even more shocked about was the way the father she had grown up with had relayed the information. According to the author, he said, “It’s not your fault you were born.”

“Then he repeated it, he doubled down and then tripled down,” she told Barrymore. “I thought, ‘This is the weirdest thing to say to somebody after you’ve just told them you’re not their biological father.'”

McCurdy also revealed that it “was a relationship that I let disintegrate,” before going on to say, “there wasn’t really much there to begin with.” She told the talk show host that she had maintained a short relationship with her biological father after going to meet him but eventually, “it got to a place where that one felt a little strange, also.”

The Drew Barrymore Show airs on weekdays at 9:30 a.m. ET on CBS. Check out the full interview above.