Jennifer Aniston’s upcoming Apple+ limited series, I’m Glad My Mom Died, based on Jennette McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, has been left in the lurch by filmmaker Jason Reitman.
The Juno director abandoned the 10-episode project after a tense spat with McCurdy, who is serving as showrunner along with Ari Katcher, Puck reports. Now, because of Aniston’s limited availability, the show producers have just two weeks to find another director before Apple TV+ drops the project altogether.
McCurdy, 33, and Reitman, 47, reportedly clashed over creative differences in a dispute that one source told Puck became “disrespectful” to Reitman. The director, known for his award-winning dramedies, devised a far more comedic scheme for the new series than McCurdy had desired for the show. Although McCurdy’s memoir contains gallows humor, it also explores very serious themes in earnest.
McCurdy’s memoir centers around her abusive relationship with her mother, Debra McCurdy, who died at 56 years old in 2013 of stage-four breast cancer. McCurdy also shares about her troubled adolescence as a Nickelodeon child star on the shows iCarly and Sam and Cat, alleging that producer Dan Schneider had emotionally abused her for years.
Aniston, 56, is slated to star as Debra and will also executive produce the show, and has also been open about her difficult relationship with her estranged mother, actress Nancy Dow.
“She was from this world of, ‘Honey, take better care of yourself,’ or ‘Honey, put your face on,’ or all of those odd sound bites that I can remember from my childhood,” she told Elle in 2018. “It wasn’t her trying to be a b—- or knowing she would be making some deep wounds that I would then spend a lot of money to undo,” she added.
The Apple+ TV project is executive-produced by a slate of major Hollywood players aside from Aniston, including Margot Robbie, Jerrod Carmichael, and Sharon Horgan.
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