Meet the New iCarly, a Grown-Up Show Made For the OG Fans

Miranda Cosgrove, Nathan Kress, Jerry Trainor, Laci Mosley and Jaidyn Triplett preview the revival of iCarly, which premieres June 17 on Paramount+.

By Lauren Piester Jun 04, 2021 11:45 PMTags
Watch: Jerry Trainor & "iCarly" Cast Talk Bringing Back the Show

iCarly is back and she's all grown up. 

Miranda Cosgrove is about to make her big return as Carly Shay, the original influencer, but a few things have changed in the past 10 years. Carly is now a grown-up in her late 20s, going on dates and trying to fit into modern day influencer culture. Freddie's a divorced stepdad who has moved back in with his mother, and Spencer is mostly still Spencer, but he's rich now. There are new people in Carly's world, and it's a world that has expanded to include more characters who aren't straight and white. This isn't a show for kids, but it is a show for the people who were kids then, but who are grown-up now.  

Cosgrove tells E! News that her biggest worry about reviving iCarly was making sure it wasn't just another kids' show.

"I'd say the biggest hesitation is just a lot of people associate the show with their childhoods and our main goal and what we really set out to do is make all the original fans happy, like the people that really loved the show and they were little," she says. "Which is why we wanted to make the show a little more mature this time around and not for kids—not just for kids—because we really made it with all of the OG fans in mind." 

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2021 TV Premiere Dates

Jerry Trainor, who returns as Carly's older brother Spencer, said there was "tremendous hesitation" in saying yes to the idea, especially when it was initially so "amorphous." 

"We were pretty quick to agree that we just didn't want to do the same show," he says. "We didn't want to do a kids' show again. And when we landed on the idea that what what if it was just about us, and we're back, and we're all later on in life. And could we do a version where we have more grown-up situations, and would people accept that? Is that going to be too jarring? I mean, we still have these questions, but we felt like it was worth the risk, and it was, and we're having a great time doing it." 

Watch: "iCarly" Cast Gush Over Modernized Reboot

Since iCarly ended, Nathan Kress, who plays Freddie, has grown up, gotten married, and had two kids with wife London. Freddie has been through some similarly big but very different life milestones, including divorce and a failed start-up.

"I was excited to find out my character was a dad, because I got to sort of put that hat on," he says. "I'm now a dad of two, and granted they're a lot younger than my stepdaughter in the show, so I'm having very different conversations with my TV daughter than I am with my real daughters, but it has been really fun to see some of the things being pulled from real life that are being added to the fabric of the show. It makes it feel very real but also very fresh in a way I think is kind of unexpected." 

Freddie's stepdaughter, Millicent, is played by Jaidyn Triplett. Millicent is a budding influencer on her own, and both she and Triplett have some opinions about Carly's internet antics. Triplett only watched the original show just before her audition, and noticed that technology has "evolved," as she puts it. Freddie used to carry around a big camcorder, and now all you need is a phone. 

The other newcomer is Harper, played by Laci Mosley. She's Carly's best friend and a blossoming stylist and designer, and for her, the new iCarly speaks specifically to one generation.

"We're all millennials, for the most part, so we're dealing with the same thing, you know, student loans, and how we came out and we were like, 'Jobs where?' Dating, we're getting married later. You're seeing us navigate that situation," Mosley says. "My character's bi, so you get to see a little bit of the LGBTQ experience. My character's obviously also Black, so there's things that are different with that as well. It's just a bigger perspective in the reboot than in the original...but also it still keeps the camp and the heart of the show." 

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Even as iCarly branches out into some topics that are hitting the grown-up fans, it's not going to be any less...iCarly. It's still going to be a whole lot of nonsense, with some surprises along the way. Kress says they're hoping people don't see the full scope of the show coming, and that fans will be just as weirded out as the cast was when they found themselves doing this show again 10 years later. 

"We want to weird you guys out," Trainor says. "iCarly on Paramount+, we're here to weird you out." 

Hit play on both videos above for more from the cast!

iCarly premieres June 17 on Paramount+.