When did sam and cat come out

The first and only season of Sam & Cat included 40 filmed episodes, which is a lot by anyone’s standards. Toward the end of filming, however, there were rumors of both Ariana Grande and Jennette McCurdy, the main stars, showing up late more and more.

Jennette was also dealing with near nude photos being leaked, while Ariana was working on the show and her rising music career at the same time. Throw in rumors of salary disputes among the cast and it was a lot for both lead actresses to handle.

It’s official: Nickelodeon has canceled Sam & Cat.

After the Viacom-owned cable network put the Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande live-action comedy on a lengthy production hiatus in April following behind-the-scenes conflicts, it will not be moving forward with another season.

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“Nickelodeon will not be producing more episodes of Sam & Cat,” a network spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter in a statement. “We are very proud of the show and its very talented cast and we wish them all the best.”

A recent promo hinted at a wrap-up of some sort, promising that the show would be “going out with a bang.” Sam & Cat reruns will remain on Nickelodeon’s schedule, and creator Dan Schneider is already in production on his next series, Henry Danger, slated for a fall launch.

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Grande addressed the cancellation on her Facebook and Twitter pages Sunday afternoon. “I want to thank Nickelodeon for making a childhood dream of mine come true, for being a family to me, for being so accommodating and supportive of my multitasking with my music career, and for of course introducing me to many of my fans however many years ago,” she wrote.

Nickelodeon’s decision not to move forward with a sophomore season comes after the 21-year-old McCurdy made headlines earlier this year when racy photos of the actress leaked on the web in March. Following reported salary issues, McCurdy failed to appear at the Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards, where Sam & Cat took home the TV comedy prize, while Grande won TV comedy actress and Schneider was honored with a lifetime achievement award.

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McCurdy and Grande co-star in Sam & Cat, which was given a giant 40-episode season-one order last July after only four episodes. A spinoff of Victorious and iCarly, the series follows Sam (McCurdy) and Cat (Grande) as they become best friends and unlikely roommates who start a babysitting service.

Grande’s star power has been significantly boosted since the show began, mainly due to her successful singing career. Her 2013 debut album, Yours Truly, debuted atop the Billboard 200 charts, and her follow-up, My Everything, hits stores Aug. 25, one day after her MTV Video Music Awards debut.

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The June 8, 2013, series debut was Nickelodeon’s biggest live-action launch in three years, with 4.2 million viewers tuning in. A supersized Sam & Cat episode aired ahead of the Kids’ Choice Awards drew 4 million viewers.

For Nickelodeon, losing Sam & Cat is a big blow as the rest of its live-action portfolio, which includes Every Witch Way, The Haunted Hathaways and AwesomenessTV, does not feature stars with comparable name recognition.

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Sam & Cat was destined to be the greatest show on television. It combined the stars of two beloved Nickelodeon shows (Jennette McCurdy as Sam and Ariana Grande as Cat) and had an amazing premise — two best friends became roommates and encountered a series of hilarious escapades as they built an after-school babysitting business together. The show's first season was supposed to have 20 episodes, and later got bumped up to 40 eps because it was that good. So, why was it pulled from the air after just 36 episodes?

Details surrounding the series' sudden end have always been sort of vague, but Vulture connected the dots in a new interview with Jennette. 

There's the theory that Jennette was getting paid less than Ariana, even though they had equal responsibilities on the show. Ariana denied the rumor, but Jennette explained that Nickelodeon had put her in "an uncomfortable, compromising, unfair situation" and that she had to look out for herself. The show (which debuted in June 2013) went on hiatus in April 2014, and was finally cancelled in July.

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"Nickelodeon will not be producing any more episodes of Sam & Cat. We are very proud of the show and its talented cast and we wish them the best," the network said in a statement.

Some fans of the show worried that Jennette and Ariana actually didn't get along off-screen, especially after rumors emerged that Jennette unfollowed Ariana on social media. Ariana penned a heartfelt note about the end of the series, but Jennette's name is glaringly absent. A year later, Jennette admitted that they "butted heads at times but in a very sisterly way."

At the same time, a tragic event in Jennette's personal life made her year even more difficult: during filming, her mother passed away after a long battle with cancer. 

"Six days after my mom died I went back to work," she told Vulture. "I thought, Oh if I do this Vine video, or If I do this episode, if I hit every mark, then I'll be fine because I'll have something else to focus on. But really I was just putting this huge life-changing event on the back burner and it was slowly causing me to unravel to the point where I would say I got to my lowest emotional point."

It sounds like Sam & Cat came to an end for a combination of reasons — pay disputes, negative rumors swirling around the cast, and a tough relationship between the two co-stars. Details are still vague, unfortunately. They might always be.

The year and a half following the end of Sam & Cat has been a period of intense growth and change for Jennette, and she sounds so much happier. She's the star of the Netflix series Between, where she plays the pregnant teenage daughter of a minister in a post-apocalyptic world where a mysterious disease has killed everyone over the age of 21. She also wrote and produced her own web series called What's Next for Sarah? in which her character finds herself suddenly single and jobless. (It also featured a pretty pointed jab at Ariana — one episode features a girl in a high ponytail who can't stop bragging about her accomplishments.)

Jennette is also in love! She's been dating her Between co-star Jesse Carere, who happens to play her love interest on the show, for about a year.

She's always been one of the friendliest faces in Hollywood, and we can't wait to see where she goes next!

Hannah Orenstein is the author of several novels, including Meant to Be Mine (out June 7, 2022), Head Over Heels, Love at First Like, and Playing with Matches. She's also the Deputy Editor of Dating at Elite Daily. She lives in Brooklyn. 

At first, it seemed like a great idea. Take two beloved actresses from two hit Nickelodeon shows; put them together in a spin-off produced by the network’s biggest hitmaker; and watch the ratings skyrocket. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out, many things. What started as an excellent plan in theory took just about a year to fall apart, as Nickelodeon confirmed Sunday that “Sam & Cat” is officially canceled; the episode that aired Saturday night will serve as the series finale. It’s an unsurprising — but still unusual — conclusion to the very strange journey of one of Nickelodeon’s most popular shows, which has been plagued with problems since earlier this year.

In case tween-focused programming isn’t on your radar, the sitcom starred Jennette McCurdy as Sam from “iCarly” and Ariana Grande as Cat from “Victorious” (playing the same characters they did on their respective shows) as unlikely besties who start an after-school babysitting business. Both “iCarly” and “Victorious” were created by Dan Schneider, the brains behind some of the network’s biggest hits over two decades, including “All That,” “Drake & Josh” and “Zoey 101.” With Schneider in charge of “Sam & Cat,” it seemed like a no-brainer that this show would take off like his others did; the network ordered 20 episodes to start.

Except there were a few things working against everyone. When the show debuted in June 2013, McCurdy was known mostly for her work on “iCarly” and trying (without much success) to launch a country music career. Grande had some small roles before “Victorious” and was starting to make  inroads in the pop-music world. Either way, it seemed obvious that both actresses had bigger plans than another kid-friendly sitcom. It didn’t  help that McCurdy and Grande were also in their early 20s, a little older than usual for Nickelodeon stars.

But when about 4.2 million people tuned in for the “Sam & Cat” series premiere — the network’s best live-action debut in three years — executives saw dollar signs. Within a month, Nickelodeon doubled the order to 40 episodes for the first season. That’s a massive number of episodes, and Schneider said at the time it felt “daunting.” Plus, it left less time for both of his stars to pursue their side projects.

Regardless, they charged through; though by this past winter, things started to unravel. McCurdy went on a podcast and joked about her relationship with NBA player Andre Drummond, making fun of his kissing skills. A few days later, racy photos of McCurdy were posted across the Internet. (Drummond denied leaking the pictures.) At the end of March, McCurdy was conspicuously absent from the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, the network’s flagship event. Schneider received the network’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement award and was honored on stage by many young stars he had launched to stardom.

McCurdy later tweeted that there was a long story behind why she didn’t attend. “I was put in an uncomfortable, compromising, unfair situation (many of you have guessed what it is) and I had to look out for me,” McCurdy wrote. She clarified that it didn’t have anything to do with the risque photos, but instead “has to do with how [N]ickelodeon treated me.”

Nickelodeon had no comment on the tweets. In early April, word got out that “Sam & Cat” was going on “hiatus” even though there were still several episodes of Season 1 left to film. Rumors flew about a McCurdy-Grande feud and tension on set. TMZ reported that McCurdy was angry that Grande — who at this point had released a No. 1 album — netted a larger salary. Grande emphatically denied this, while reps for Nickelodeon blamed the break on an “unusually long production cycle” and insisted the show was not canceled. There was also no news about a Season 2 renewal; generally, Schneider’s shows are renewed like clockwork.

Then, there was simply radio silence — about the show, at least. Grande’s singing career exploded over the next several months, thanks to her smash single “Problem” (featuring rapper Iggy Azalea), making her more of a household name than ever.

Meanwhile, a few more episodes of “Sam & Cat” trickled out over the summer until Nickelodeon finally said this weekend that Saturday’s episode (the 35th of the order) would be the last. “Nickelodeon will not be producing more episodes of ‘Sam & Cat,'” a network rep told the Hollywood Reporter. “We are very proud of the show and its very talented cast and we wish them all the best.”

And that’s the abrupt end of the saga of “Sam & Cat,” which had all the ingredients for another long-running success. Instead, it’s a rare miss for Schneider, by far the shortest run for any of his shows over the last 20 years. But he’s moved on to the next project, as “Henry Danger” premieres later this month.

Grande posted a lengthy goodbye message and tribute to her character, Cat, on Facebook. No word from McCurdy, who has stayed under the radar the past several months.

“So the news is out about Sam & Cat. I felt it wasn’t my place to make any sort of announcement so I kept quiet until now,” Grande wrote in part, noting that the network launched her career. “I want to thank Nickelodeon for making a childhood dream of mine come true, for being a family to me, for being so accommodating and supportive of my multitasking with my music career, and for of course introducing me to many of my fans however many years ago.”