Nathan Kress Talks Bonding With His 4-Year-Old While Watching 'iCarly'

Actor Nathan Kress is mostly popular as Freddie Benson on the fan-favorite Nickelodeon show iCarly, which aired from 2007 to 2012. Three years after the show, Kress married his then-girlfriend, London Elise Kress, and now shares two beautiful daughters (Rosie, 4, and Evie, 14 months) with her.

In a recent talk with People, he told fans that iCarly helped the bond with his four-year-old grow stronger. He also recalled rewatching the show with her and having a great time.

In July last year, a reboot of the comedy series premiered and featured most of the original cast members, including Kress. Before filming the 2021 version, Kress recalled rewatching iCarly with Rosie. Keep reading to find out why and more details on their relationship.

Kress rewatched iCarly to make sure he remembered every detail about Freddie. He also had very little time to prepare for filming, but he saved enough to watch the show. "One of the research pieces that I wanted to do was to go back through and watch the show because I knew there were going to be details that I would forget," the 29-year-old said.

He also really missed his time as Freddie on the show. "I wanted to get back into what Freddie sounded like, how he talked, how he reacted to things," he explained. "So I did the math on how many episodes of iCarly there were, and how little time I had between when the kids went to bed and when I had to go to bed." 

While watching the show, he felt sad about possibly not finishing it before filming. He then asked his oldest daughter to watch with him. This was an amazing decision since the little girl loved watching her father on-screen. 

"She has her little routine when the credits go on. It goes through all the names. She's like, 'Here comes Daddy! Here comes Daddy! Here comes Daddy! Daddy!'" Kress explained. "It's been very fun to do that with her and to have a piece of content that, even though she's young, she can still understand and enjoy. And it's actually been a bizarre bonding experience for us."

Kress also revealed how happy he was that rewatching iCarly with Rosie brought them closer. Rosie was so proud of her father that she'd tell her mates, "my daddy does iCarly."

In response to this, Kress added that he and his wife were trying to keep things under control so it wouldn't sound like she was bragging every time. "So we're trying to make sure that she doesn't just go throwing that around because we don't want her accidentally humble bragging without realizing what she's doing."

Since Kress became a father in 2015, he shared that he has learned many things. However, the best one was how important it was that he dedicated time to spend with his family.

Kress recalled dedicating his time and life to his family so that he could raise "well-rounded, loving, kind children with character and integrity."

This influenced him to manage his time for other things well enough to have enough for his family. He said, "For that reason, I've had to really learn to prioritize my time and make the most of the time that I have with my kids, but then also not sacrificing too much on my time with my wife." 

He also noted how important it was to take out time for oneself. "And then at the same time, also not sacrificing too much on time for myself, taking care of myself and doing things that I enjoy."

While he explained that he and his family were in a great place in real life, in the iCarly revival, he played a divorced father. He also admitted that he felt weird about the show at some point. 

When asked why he explained that iCarly was very important to fans, so the revival had to be as good as the original series. He said, "Reviving a project like this comes with so much risk because it was so very beloved by our generation." 

Kress said. "And in a world where there's a lot of properties being rebooted or revived or revisited or redone in some way, there's an automatic response that people have where they don't want people messing with their childhood and things that they loved when they were kids."

He noted that the "stakes were incredibly high," and if the reboot was bad, it would ruin the image of iCarly for fans. "So we had to be really careful with what we wanted the show to be."