Main Characters
Carly Shay
Carly (Miranda Cosgrove) is the teen star of her own popular web show, iCarly, which she produces with her two best friends, Sam and Freddie. She is 13 years old as the series begins. Carly lives with her 26-year old brother Spencer in the Bushwell Plaza, an apartment building in Seattle (which is depicted as an exterior shot of the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles). Her father is in the Air Force but stationed on a submarine (it is also said in the first episode that he is currently in Europe), and it's unclear what happened to her mother. Because of the show, Carly is a local celebrity, which sometimes helps her get out of sticky situations, but she remains an average teenage girl who never lets fame get to her head. Carly is quite intelligent and, unlike Miranda Cosgrove's previous role, Megan Parker, from Drake and Josh, hates to lie about anything or anyone, implied in the episode iPromise Not to Tell, where she was overcome by guilt when forced to keep Sam's troublemaking a secret. Carly usually has very high grades in school (but has never had a straight A report card) and is even offered a scholarship to Briarwood Academy, an elite private school. She often acts as a peacemaker when Sam and Freddie fight.
Samantha "Sam" Puckett
Sam (Jennette McCurdy) is Carly's best friend and co-host of iCarly. While she's also friends with Freddie, their relationship is strained at best, since Sam enjoys tormenting him. However, her first kiss was with him, though nothing ever came of it. She usually goes to great lengths to torment him, such as revealing his secret to the whole viewing world, hitting him continuously with a tennis racket, and pushing him off elevated areas. Sam tends to be the opposite of her best friend; while Carly is the level-headed one, Sam is argumentative, hot-tempered, sarcastic, stubborn, and at times intimidating. Sam is almost always at Carly's apartment to get away from her family; it's implied that she has a dysfunctional home life and an unreliable mother, who apparently never wakes up before 12:00 p.m., and is supported more by Sam than vice versa. Sam is also a troublemaker and extremely lazy, and as a result she often gets in trouble with Principal Franklin (who she calls by his first name, Ted) and other authority figures, especially Miss Francine Briggs.
Fredward "Freddie" Benson
Freddie (Nathan Kress) is the technical producer of iCarly and Carly's neighbor who lives across the hall, where he stays with his obsessively protective mother, who would have preferred a daughter. He has a huge crush on Carly, though Carly has made it clear that at the moment, she is not interested. While he and Sam are actually best friends, he bears the brunt of her abuse and they have a somewhat hostile relationship. Freddie has had one girlfriend, an iCarly fan with ulterior motives named Valerie in the episode iWant To Date Freddie. However, his first kiss was with Sam in the episode "iKiss", although they claimed it was "just to get their first kiss over with," and nothing ever came of it. Freddie is also particularly close to Carly's brother Spencer, whom he tends to rely on as an older male figure.
Spencer Shay
Spencer (Jerry Trainor) is Carly's 26-year-old brother and legal guardian. He is an artist by profession and is a sculptor. He is goofy, weird, and immature (which sometimes embarrasses Carly), but he has also proven to others that he is a responsible guardian to Carly. Spencer went to law school for three days, and his marginal law knowledge has occasionally proven useful to Carly and her friends, such as in the episode iPromote Techfoots, when Carly and the gang use Spencer as their lawyer to get out of a contract with Daka Shoes. As a running gag, whenever Spencer builds or fixes anything except his own sculptures, it tends to burst into flames spontaneously like he's pyrokinetic. Spencer's best friend is Socko, who sells socks; and his brother Tyler, who sells ties. The two also have an uncle named Otto (a pun of auto) who works with cars and a cousin named Rob with kleptomania.
Minor Characters
Nevel Papperman
Nevel (Reed Alexander) is an 11-year-old critic who runs the nevelocity.com website, a site that reviews other websites. He is also a recurring antagonist of the series. Nevel is a vindictive, conniving little boy who has a crush on Carly. He acts overly mature for his age and has a slightly effeminate demeanor. When Carly refused to kiss him he wrote a scathing review of iCarly.com on his site and later successfully hacked into and sabotaged iCarly.com. More recently he staged a phony contest on iCarly.com in which the winner (himself of course) would win a new car. In another episode, he buys iCarly from Mandy, iCarly's biggest fan, and asks for a kiss from Carly as an exchange. Nevel lives with his mother, who makes very good olive tapenade, and his senile grandmother. He is afraid of germs and his dream in life is to open up his own haberdashery. His favorite expression is "You'll rue the day!" In the "iChristmas" episode he is shown as Carly's boyfriend.
Gibby Carlson
Gibby (Noah Munck) is a classmate of Carly, Sam and Freddie. He is physically immature for his age, slightly chubby and likes to dance shirtless. He is often a target of Sam's bullying. His middle name is Cornelius.
Jeremy
Jeremy (Nathan Pearson) (nicknamed "Germy" by Freddie) is another classmate of Carly, Sam and Freddie. He is an overweight boy who always appears to have a bad cold. He sneezes and sniffles constantly. In "iNevel", the gang paid him to attack Nevel and infect him with his germs, but Nevel offered him more money to leave him alone.
Marissa Benson
Marissa Benson (Mary Scheer) is Freddie's neurotic, overprotective mother. She always wanted a daughter but had to settle for Freddie instead. She hovers over him constantly and always reminds him to shampoo twice, change his underwear and brush his teeth, much to Freddie's embarrassment and Sam's amusement. She thinks Spencer is an irresponsible parental figure and a bad influence on her son.
Ted Franklin
Ted Franklin (Tim Russ) is the principal at Ridgeway. He never hesitates to discipline troublemaking students (particularly Sam) but does so in a fair and kindhearted way rather than the "usual" strict way of most principals in the media. He goes out of his way to be fair and on occasion sides with students over teachers who pick on students or make false accusations. He is the only adult character (regular or recurring) who is not portrayed in a comically inept or negative light.
Francine Briggs
Francine Briggs (Mindy Sterling) is an English teacher at the junior high school attended by Carly, Sam and Freddie. She is impatient and hostile towards her students. Her lessons are boring, and students tend to goof off or nod off (or in Sam's case, eat breakfast) during her class. In "iSpy a Mean Teacher", it's shown that she knows how to play the bagpipes.
Lewbert
Lewbert (Jeremy Rowley) is the doorman for the building in which Carly, Spencer and Freddie live. He is in his 30s, has a large wart on his left cheek and is very slovenly. He is loud, obnoxious and hates kids. He has a crush on Freddie's mom and they briefly dated when Lewbert was injured on the job and Freddie's mom offered to take care of him.
Amanda "Mandy" Valdez
Amanda "Mandy" Valdez (Aria Wallace) is iCarly's self-proclaimed "#1 Fan." She is loud, hyper and obnoxious. Her fanaticism for iCarly borders on obsession. Her parents are hippies and her father has left the family. She likes to wear weird hats and a duck mask. When Carly lost the iCarly domain name, Mandy bought it back and insisted on becoming iCarly's new manager, but was eventually tricked into selling the domain name to Nevel Papperman. It has been implied that she has a crush on Spencer.
Special Guest Appearances
Episodes
| Season | Episodes | Season Premiere | Season Finale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 25 | September 8, 2007 | July 25, 2008 |
| Season 2 | 45[2] | September 27, 2008 | 2009 |
Media
Music
Columbia Records and Nickelodeon Records has released a soundtrack for the show entitled iCarly. It includes the theme song and four original songs by Miranda Cosgrove. Several tracks by guest artists and cast dialogue are also included.
DVD releases
Paramount Home Entertainment and Nickelodeon released iCarly: Season 1, Volume 1 Box Set on DVD September 23, 2008.[3] The DVD has 13 episodes on two discs, which means it is only half of season one. It includes the bonus feature of the song, "Leave It All to Me" by Miranda Cosgrove and Drake Bell.
iCarly: Season 1, Volume 2 Box Set will be released on April 21, 2009 with 13 episodes on two discs. The Special Features include: Behind the Slime with the Cast of iCarly; Behind-the-Scenes Extras; Special Bonus: Pilot Episode of True Jackson, VP[4]
iCarly: Season 2 Volume 1 Box set will be released on August 18, 2009 This 2-disc set running 316 minutes is presented in full screen video, and English Stereo audio. The release includes Behind-the-Scenes Extras, such as a Featurette for The Making of "iGo to Japan".[5]
Website
The iCarly.com website contains many promotional videos by the cast (as their respective characters), as well as content created and sent in by viewers. Other features on the site include characters' blogs, pictures from the set, songs, games, and comments from viewers. Many fictional websites from this show and other TEENick shows redirect to this page. For example, Zaplook (a parody of Google), SplashFace (a parody of YouTube), CraigsMix (a parody of Craigslist), Nevelocity and NeverWatchiCarly.com redirect to this page. iCarly.com can only be accessed within the United States; if accessed overseas, the user is automatically redirected to a country specific iCarly site (if available).
Video Games
On May 13, 2009, Nickelodeon announced they had reached an agreement with Activision to produce an iCarly video game for the DS and Wii. The game is currently scheduled to be released in fall 2009.[6]
Books
| Book | Summary | Episode(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. iHave a Web Show! | Carly becomes an Internet star when footage of her hosting a school talent show is posted to the Web, resulting in a weekly variety-show Webcast made by her and her friends; Plans to attract more viewers go wrong when Sam and Carly pit their ideas against those of Spencer and Freddie. | 1.iPilot 2.iWant More Viewers |
| 2. iWanna Stay! | The focus of Carly's next Webcast is what mean teachers do outside of the classroom. So Carly and Freddie trail the grumpy Miss Briggs, but end up stuck inside her home; Carly's grandfather makes a surprise visit and is none too thrilled by Spencer's unusual behavior, so he questions his ability to be in charge. Carly must convince him that her brother is up to the task of being her guardian. | 8. iSpy a Mean Teacher 5. iWanna Stay with Spencer |
| 3. iWant a World Record! | Carly tries to break the record for the longest Webcast and must keep the show going for more than 24 hours. Meanwhile, Spencer builds a giant sculpture downstairs; The show's 50th airing is in jeopardy when Sam gets detention, so Carly and Freddie try to get in trouble as well to shoot "from the inside" with Sam. Meanwhile, Spencer builds a giant cup of coffee, but drops his phone into it. | 10. iWant a World Record 19. iGot Detention |
| 4. iAm Famous! | A producer wants to bring Carly's show to television, but not without a major overhaul first; Carly is excited to get a show sponsor and readily endorses a new type of shoe. When the product turns out to be a dud and fans complain, the gang tries to find a way out of the contract. Elsewhere, Spencer falls asleep on the bus and ends up in Canada. | 10. iCarly Saves TV 19. iPromote Tech-Foots |
