Singer and Broadway actor Justin Guarini gave up a long-awaited spot in THE LION KING to take a chance on AMERICAN IDOL before the competition had even chosen its top 30.
“I just trusted that what had gotten me to that place would get me where I needed to go,” he said, recalling that leap of faith in an interview with PEOPLE about his new book, Center Stage Confidence: How to Own Your Story and Command Any Room.
Back in 2002, Guarini had been auditioning for the Broadway musical for years without quite making the cut. Then the call he wanted finally came, just as a completely different opportunity started to take shape.
He was sitting in his car outside work when THE LION KING’s casting director offered him a role and asked when he could start. By then, he already had the yellow piece of paper that AMERICAN IDOL called a golden ticket.
At first, he tried to keep both possibilities alive. He explained that he might be eliminated from the television competition and asked whether he could call back in a week, once he knew more.
Hollywood week made the choice harder, not easier. Looking around at the lights, the judges’ dais and the other exhausted contestants — people who were both his friends and his competitors — Guarini began to cry.
He worried about the cameras catching the moment and how the footage might be presented. But as he stopped to listen to himself, he sensed that he should stay with AMERICAN IDOL.
“And that was a moment of beautiful divine confidence for me,” he told PEOPLE. He declined the Broadway opportunity politely and asked the casting director to keep him in mind for the future.
Choosing the competition did not mean he knew how it would end. He was not yet in the top 30, and the show was new; he was giving up a concrete offer for something that still came with plenty of uncertainty.
Broadway did come later. Guarini made his debut in 2010’s Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown, playing Carlos, a role documented in Playbill’s original casting announcement for the Lincoln Center Theater production at the Belasco Theatre.
And AMERICAN IDOL brought its own unexpected ending: second place behind singer Kelly Clarkson. In a separate PEOPLE interview about the finale, Guarini said he felt peace about the result even while acknowledging that he had wanted to win.
“I was so happy for Kelly Clarkson,” he said, remembering watching his fellow contestant take the first season’s crown, rather than treating her success as something that erased his own possibilities.
Now he is taking those experiences offstage. According to the official Simon & Schuster listing, Entrepreneur Press released Center Stage Confidence on Oct. 6; the book focuses on helping professionals communicate more clearly and stop holding themselves back.
Guarini told PEOPLE that performing, interviewing people and public speaking all draw on similar skills. The setting may change, but he still wants to help an audience connect with a story.
For him, that career-changing decision was not a moment when fear disappeared or the outcome became obvious. It was a moment when he moved forward anyway — and, eventually, found his way to Broadway by a different route.
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