Jennette McCurdy's 3 Brothers: All About Dustin, Marcus and Scott (2024)

Jennette McCurdy grew up with three older brothers: Dustin, Marcus and Scott.

Raised in California by their mother Debra and her husband Mark McCurdy, the former Nickelodeon star recalled that being both the youngest child and only daughter made her a target of her mother's emotional and, at times, physical abuse.

"My mom had always dreamt of being a famous actor and she became obsessed with making me a star," Jennette previously told PEOPLE. Debra was preoccupied with Jennette's appearance, encouraging her to count calories, whiten her teeth and tint her eyelashes starting at 10 years old.

Jennette, who says she was never actually interested in acting, said it wasn't until after her mother's death from breast cancer in 2013 that she was able to process her trauma. She detailed her troubled childhood in the memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died, released in 2022.

The iCarly alum dedicated her book to her siblings, with whom she remains close. When asked if Dustin, Marcus and Scott needed time to "process" her memoir title, she told The Hollywood Reporter, "Not at all. My brothers have been so supportive, so understanding. They get the title, to put it simply."

In an interview with Teen Vogue, Jennette revealed that they were also empathetic to the writing process, sharing that it was emotional as she resurfaced the past.

"To be able to then call Marcus, Dustin, or Scottie at the end of that and maybe share the memory was really helpful both personally and creatively," she said.

Here's everything to know about Jennette McCurdy's siblings: Dustin, Marcus and Scott.

They were raised Mormon

Jennette and her siblings grew up in Garden Grove, California, and their family was part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they were young. As Jennette recalled in her memoir, her family’s weekly church attendance became a source of peace for her as a child.

“Church is a beautiful, peaceful, three-hour weekly reprieve from the place I hate most: home,” Jennette wrote. The actress said her mom hoarded, and their family home was cramped and cluttered — so much so that Jennette at her brothers slept on mats in the living room.

The four siblings were all home-schooled by their mother, while their father worked long hours to support the family.

Their mom wanted Marcus to be an actor too

In I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette says that Debra had "different expectations" for her and Marcus than for her other siblings, and that Debra pushed them both into acting despite neither being interested.

Debra hired Barbara Cameron, mother of Kirk Cameron and Candace Cameron-Bure, to manage Jennette and Marcus and get them auditions. Barbara assigned each sibling a monologue to practice for half an hour before performing in front of her in her home.

In Jennette's memoir, she recalls that Marcus did quite well, telling her after his audition that Barbara and her second-in-command, Laura, were "talkative and laughed a lot" with him.

Jennette wrote that her own audition wasn't a good experience and that Barbara and Laura told her mother, "We like Marcus a lot; we want to take him on as a client. But Jennette — she just ... lacks charisma."

Eventually, Debra convinced Barbara to take on Jennette as a client anyway — as long as she took acting lessons, which they didn't think Marcus needed. Despite their reservations, Jennette soon found success in the industry, and as her career took off, she became her mom's main priority, which isolated her from the rest of her family, including her siblings.

Debra's abuse led to some animosity between the siblings

Some of Debra's abuse included manipulating Jennette into believing her siblings were also upset with her when Debra was.

In I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette includes an email her mother sent to her after seeing a photo of the actress with a man on TMZ.

"Sick! I raised you better than this. What happened to my good little girl?" the email reads in part. "Where did she go, and who is this monster that has replaced her? You're an ugly monster now. I told your brothers about you and they all said they disown you just like I do. We want nothing to do with you."

Jennette also described her childhood relationship with Dustin as feeling like she annoyed him most of the time, though she adored him. "I love that he's good at drawing and history and geography, three things I'm terrible at," she wrote in her book. "I try to compliment him a lot on the things he's good at, but he calls me a brownnoser."

Dustin explained to The Washington Post that Debra stoked animosity between him and his sister. "Back then, it seemed like Jennette often tried to get us in trouble and kiss up to Mom," he said. "Now, I totally get it. She just wanted to stay safe in whatever way she could."

In I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette claimed that Debra forced her to shower with Scott, whom she affectionately called "Scottie."

"He's almost 16 at this point," Jennette wrote, noting she was about 11 years old at the time. "I get really embarrassed when she showers us together. I can tell he does too." She added that she and Scott would look away from each other and try to distract themselves from the discomfort they experienced.

Jennette said that Debra told them she showered them together to save time and that they eventually gave up trying to get her to do so separately. "Scottie asked if he could shower himself once," she wrote. "Mom sobbed and said she didn’t want him to grow up so he never asked again after that."

Dustin didn't know the extent of the abuse Jennette suffered until he read her book

Jennette's brothers have been supportive of her healing journey, but Dustin admitted that while he knew "the outline, the sketch of what had happened" to Jennette, some of the specifics about the abuse she endured from Debra took him by surprise.

"I do realize intellectually, of course, that that was kind of the whole point: It was a very deliberate, very covert, clandestine relationship," he told The Washington Post.

Dustin said that Debra was also "mentally abusive" toward him and his father and that he found some relief in Debra's obsession with Jennette.

"For me, having [Jennette] be the breadwinner, this is going to sound really selfish, but it kind of got our mom away from us," he explained. "So part of me was more than willing to be like, 'Oh, she's fine. Take her out of the house for a while. That sounds great.' "

Most of the McCurdy siblings weren't raised by their biological father

About a year and a half after Debra's death, Mark, who raised all four siblings, revealed to Jennette, Scott, Dustin and Marcus that only Marcus was his biological child.

"I felt that he'd always been pretty disengaged and disconnected, so it was shocking, but I also started to find excuses for him in that information: 'Oh, that's why he was so absent all those years,' " Jennette recalled on The Drew Barrymore Show.

Jennette added that Mark repeatedly told her, "'It's not your fault you were born.' I thought, 'This is the weirdest thing to say to somebody after you've just told them you’re not their biological father.' " She said her relationship with Mark dissolved quickly after that conversation.

Jennette then sought to find her, Dustin and Scott's biological father, learning he was a trombone player named Andrew, with whom her mother had an ongoing affair. When she located him, Jennette said they connected well and communicated enough that she wanted to introduce her siblings to him.

"I have three older brothers, two of them are biological brothers, and they hadn't met him," she told host Drew Barrymore. "I was trying to get them to meet him and thinking like, 'This could be good, this could be healing for all of us.' That was my goal from when I was a little girl: 'I want a good family.' "

Jennette said she spoke regularly with her biological father for three to four months, but eventually, that relationship also fizzled out.

Marcus is a computer whiz who shares Jennette's sense of humor

Described in I'm Glad My Mom Died as "so responsible, so reliable," Marcus was "basically an adult" to Jennette when he was just 15 years old. "He seems to have a sturdiness to him that I haven’t seen in many other adults around me," she wrote.

Today, Marcus has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's in computer science. He is a computer programmer and full-stack developer for Obsidian Security, per his LinkedIn. Marcus also does his own creative work on the side, including a name generator and a Chrome extension that tracks the price of Dogecoin. According to his profile on X (formerly Twitter), he lives in Philadelphia.

He spoke with The New York Times about Debra's abuse of the family.

"You were always walking on eggshells — is it going to be nice mom or crazy mom today?" he recalled. "One day she'd be fine, the next day she'd be yelling at everybody. Every holiday was super overdramatic. She'd lose her mind on Christmas if something wasn't perfect."

Marcus said their grandmother wasn't happy with the title of I'm Glad My Mom Died, but he appreciated it because he and Jennette have a similar sense of humor.

He told the newspaper, "It's more of a coping mechanism. You can either be like, 'Woe is me, my life is horrible.' Or you find the humor in these things that are really tragic."

In 2022, Jennette told BuzzFeed News that she's close with Marcus' daughter and revealed that watching her grow has helped her. Jennette recounted going on a Disney trip with Marcus and his family and having to go to the bathroom to cry.

"Because it's so beautiful to watch a child just be able to be who they are," she explained. "That is an opinionated, hilarious child that is so authentic. I think I've healed through watching them and their relationship with their parents. Just being able to be around children who are so free."

Jennette's brother Scott is an illustrator

In I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette says that Scott is the most "nostalgic" of her siblings, a reason why she especially loved him when she was young.

"Scottie cries at the end of Christmas and the end of birthdays and the end of Halloween and sometimes at the end of a regular day," she wrote of her childhood memories of her brother. "He cries because he’s sad that it's over, and even though it barely is over, he's already yearning for it."

Today, Scott lives in Redondo Beach, California, and loves skateboarding and snowboarding. Having a lifelong love of drawing, he works as an illustrator, muralist and graphic designer, according to his Instagram.

Scott explained in an interview with The Boston Voyager that it took him some time to develop an artistic niche.

"A couple years after graduating I was still drawing but wasn't getting real work from it. I started to really develop a style, and the response was great," he said. "I was posting a lot on social media, which is where I was still connecting with people in the industry."

He began getting freelance work for graphics, and word of mouth kept the offers coming.

"The career side of it just kind of developed itself," he said. "I didn't actually realize this was going to be my career. I was getting so busy, that at one point I just thought to myself, 'I guess this is my job now.' "

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.