Justin Guarini is opening up about the career collapse that nearly broke him.
The first “American Idol” runner-up, 46, spoke about learning he had been dropped by RCA Records in 2003 during a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, a moment he now counts as transformative. Guarini, who recently released his book “Center Stage Confidence: How to Own Your Story and Command Any Room,” said the public humiliation became “one of the greatest things that could ever have happened to me.”
“Failure is the greatest teacher, one of the greatest teachers that we can have in any given situation because in that failure, you have one of two paths,” he told the outlet. “You either give up or you keep going.”
That mindset took years to develop. In his book, Guarini described watching the news unfold on television and feeling his world implode. “I stared at the TV in shock as my entire world came crumbling down around my ears,” he wrote. “Every illusion of fame, fortune, and glory fell away in an instant — only to be replaced by the silence of loss. In that moment, the veil of my arrogance, my assumptions, and my entitlement were lifted away, and I saw my life for what it had become.”
The aftermath was brutal. “I spent months playing my sad story on repeat,” Guarini continued in his book. “I lost weight, slept more and more, and became less and less like myself, and the people who loved me started to notice and worry. I was living the ghost of the life I had always dreamed of and burning money and time in equal and absurd measure.”
The Pennsylvania native had finished second to Kelly Clarkson on the inaugural “American Idol” season in 2002, a result that still launched him into national recognition. He released his self-titled debut album in 2003 and starred alongside Clarkson in the musical romantic comedy “From Justin to Kelly.” While the album reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200, the film bombed, and scrutiny of his appearance and performance mounted.
Guarini said that his isolation deepened as his prospects dimmed. “That dark place of not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to look at myself in the mirror, not wanting to go out and see anything, it just was a period of isolation,” he said. “And it’s very easy to do when you live behind a gate in an exclusive community.”
The turning point came when he shifted focus from metrics to meaning. “I realized that there were still people celebrating me,” he recalled. “I realized there was still something worth celebrating in my life. And it wasn’t the vanity metrics of how many people voted for me or how many followers I would end up having or the amount of money I could make or blah, blah. It was just doing something and going back to something that I really truly loved.”
For Guarini, that meant performing anywhere that would have him. “For me, that came in the form of just going back out and getting on the stage and singing for people,” he said. “And I would do it at everything from gala events to state fairs to wherever.”
Those gigs rebuilt his foundation. After independently releasing his second album in 2005, he found television work before making his Broadway debut in “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” in 2010. He later appeared in “American Idiot,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Wicked,” and in 2015 became widely recognized again as Lil’ Sweet, the flamboyant character in Diet Dr Pepper commercials.
Guarini now sees the entire arc as necessary. “So there was a cascading effect,” he explained. “So the bottom line was being willing to sit in that place of failure, of discontent, darkness, but continue to go and continue to just say, ‘Okay, how can I continue to move through this space of discomfort, learn about myself and keep going?’ And ultimately, that led to a massive amount of growth that I don’t think would have happened had I just, you know, stayed famous.”
Nearly a quarter-century after his “Idol” debut, Guarini said persistence matters more than peak moments. “And so, for me, it has been almost 25 years now of some awesome ups and downs, and every single time I go up and down and up and down, it’s just a consistency again of staying in the game,” he shared. “And so, finally, just staying in the game… because it doesn’t matter if it’s the media, it doesn’t matter if it’s entertainment, doesn’t matter if it’s business. This life in this world is cyclical and if you stay in the game, and you do good work, and you’re kind to people, the opportunity always comes back around to you, and you’ll be more prepared to take advantage of it when it does.”
Guarini’s book “Center Stage Confidence” is now available.