‘American Idol’ Alum Justin Guarini Learned His Record Label Dropped Him From An ‘SNL’ Joke

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For longtime viewers of “American Idol,” Justin Guarini will always be remembered as the mop-topped runner-up to Kelly Clarkson in Season 1.

Since then, he’s parlayed that initial burst of fame into a successful showbiz career, which has included becoming the voice of Diet Dr. Pepper and numerous Broadway roles, ranging from 2010’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” to the Green Day-inspired “American Idiot” to “Wicked.”

That said, he’s also experienced his share of ups and downs over the past quarter-century, all of which informs his new book, “Center Stage Confidence: How to Own Your Story and Command Any Room.”

An ‘SNL’ Punchline

While discussing the book in an interview with Theater Mania, Guarini recalls one particularly low point, early in his post-“Idol” career, that he writes about in the book.

As Guarini shares in “Center Stage Confidence,” he had just released his debut album, which flopped hard upon arrival.

While watching “Saturday Night Live,” Tina Fey was anchoring the “Weekend Update” segment when Guarini was shocked to see his face on the screen. In the bit, Fey tells a joke about Guarini being dropped by his record label.

Guarini, however, had not been informed that he’d been dropped, learning the news by becoming the punchline to a late-night joke.

“I allowed someone else, who was just telling a joke, to define me,” Guarini said as he reflected on that experience.

“Tina [Fey] was just doing her job,” he continued. “But that moment of finding out, along with the viewers of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ that I had been dropped by my record label, became an identity, and I sat in that identity for a long time. It colored everything I did.”

That painful time, however, led him to an epiphany that changed everything for him.

“But there’s two paths: You either sit with that identity and allow it to determine the direction of your life, or like everyone who’s ever been successful at anything, you recognize it as an event. Something that happened,” he said.

Building Confidence

Continuing in that vein, Guarini shared what that experience ultimately taught him.

“The next time something like that comes along, you do something a little bit differently, and you begin to build evidence that you can do the thing. Because confidence loves proof,” he explained.

“And if it’s been done before, you can do it. Just look at Roger Bannister, the first person to break a four-minute mile. For decades, scientists said couldn’t be done. If it has been done, you can do it. Anybody and everybody who has had a success that you want has gone through public failure. But they become experiences, not an identity,” Guarini added.

“Just take action every single day,” he advised. “What’s the one small step I can take today and the next day and the next day and the next day? And then you begin to build that thing that we were talking about all the way at the beginning of this conversation: Evidence, which is what confidence loves. Confidence says, ‘I can because I already did.'”