Justin Guarini surprisingly passed up an opportunity to star in the huge Broadway hit “The Lion King” while competing on “American Idol” in 2002 — but he now feels hakuna matata about that decision.
The 44-year-old Season 1 contestant chose to stick with a potential shot at super-stardom on the then-little-known reality competition, despite getting an offer to appear in the Great White Way musical after “years and years” of auditioning, he recently told Yahoo.
Guarini wound up being the runner-up to the first-season winner, talk show host Kelly Clarkson, and subsequently faced numerous career setbacks in the following years, including a failed debut album and the 2003 movie bomb “From Justin to Kelly,” which also starred Clarkson.
“Oh, just say it: My album was a flop. The movie that I did after that was an absolute flop,” Guarini said. “It was really painful. Like, I remember it being something that just crushed me, because I had always wanted to have a record deal. I had always wanted to be a recording artist.”
He has now come to grips, though, with how the industry works.
“I have benefit of 20 years of hindsight to be able to see that, oh my goodness, this business is truly cyclical,” he said.
Not that Guarini’s early decision-making process was an easy one.
“I did master classes, which is like the step that you take before you get onto the actual stage,” he said of his shooting for his goal to eventually appear in “The Lion King.” “And everyone in the company management was like, ‘Look, we want you, but we just don’t have the place for you right now. Just hold on, hold on.’”
Guarini waited but in the meantime got a slot on a “show that nobody’s ever heard of called ‘American Idol,’” the Georgia native recalled, nabbing a “golden ticket” to Hollywood.
“And I remember sitting in my car, and it was about a week before I had to go to LA — a place I’d never been before. And I get this call and they’re like, ‘Hey, we finally have the role for you. We want you. How soon can you start?’”
While Guarini knew he “might get cut” from the competition, he felt he had to make the decision of a lifetime, as he had already advanced to the show’s top 30 roster.
“I looked up at the stage. I saw the ‘American Idol’ logo, the smoke, the lights, the dais where the judges sit, and I just started crying,” he said. “And this little voice said to me, ‘Go with this.’”
He stood on the platform of the Pasadena Civic Center and pondered how it was the same stage where Michael Jackson performed on at one point.
“So many of my heroes have been on this stage. I don’t know why, but I just have to go with this,” the “Dr. Pepper” commercials icon said.
Despite turning down “The Lion King” for “American Idol” 20 years ago, Guarini wound up appearing on Broadway anyway, in “American Idiot” — about a decade after his reality show debut.
“The bow on this story is that 10 years later, after my season of ‘American Idol’ ended, I would open my very first Broadway show in New York City, and we would have our opening night party in the hotel in the conference room where I first auditioned for ‘American Idol,’” he told Yahoo.
“I feel so lucky to be a part of the Broadway community because there has been no community that I’ve been a part of that’s been more accepting, more loving,” he added. “They don’t care where you come from — as long as you show up, you do your job, you’re kind, and you tell the story, they love you.
“And I love them for that as well.”