Growing up is hard—especially in the spotlight.
Miranda Cosgrove, who starred on Nickelodeon's iCarly from 2007 to 2012, recently opened up about dealing with fame and expectations at such a young age.
"For sure there was pressure," Miranda said on the Reign with with Josh Smith podcast Sept. 5. "Even when you're not on TV or acting or anything, just growing up, there's a lot of pressure to try to figure so many things out."
Miranda admitted she used to seek out negative comments online while starring on the mega-popular series.
"When I was younger, I would go through and kind of ignore all the nice comments and look for the one mean one," Miranda admitted. "I would be going through for a while and be like, 'Oh, found it!'"
Retrospect has been a powerful tool for Miranda, who currently reprises her role of Carly Shay on the Paramount+ reboot of iCarly.
"I feel like when I was younger, I didn't think about it as much as I do now," Miranda said. "Looking back, I think, 'That seems like it would've been really hard.' But when I was doing it, I wasn't really thinking about it as much. I was more just kind of living my life."
Living her life included plenty of professional obligations outside of iCarly, as well, including her 2010 debut album Sparks Fly.
"When I was really young, I would go in to write songs and the different people I was co-writing with would be like, 'What's the craziest thing that happened with a guy you were dating recently?'" Miranda said. "And I'd be thinking, 'I don't know,' I didn't really have any crazy stories because I wasn't really having a real high school or middle school experience."
Miranda points to her decision to attend college—she enrolled at USC in 2012—as a watershed moment.
"My life really took a huge turn when I did that," she said. "My whole life changed, but it was awesome. I made a lot of friends and I got to just take classes that I was interested in. I tried photography and I ended up majoring in psychology and it was just a really solid, good experience."
Miranda's revelations come on the heels of her iCarly co-star Jennette McCurdy's memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died, in which she detailed feeling "exploited" as a young star.
In an interview with The New York Times Aug. 4, Miranda supported Jennette, saying, "When you're young, you're so in your own head. You can't imagine that people around you are having much harder struggles."
Both seasons of the iCarly reboot are available to stream on Paramount+, with season three expected sometime in 2023.