Justin Guarini Visits Backstage LIVE with Richard Ridge- Watch Now!

Welcome to Backstage with Richard Ridge. My guest is one of Broadway World's favorites

His almost 30-year career on stage and screen includes the first season of American Idol

where he performed in front of 30 million viewers each week. You know him from such shows as Wicked, American Idiot, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Romeo and Juliet, and In Transit, and on television from his wildly popular character

little suite, seen in hundreds of millions of homes in diet Dr. Pepper commercials in America

He has also coached and mentored leaders across a wide spectrum of businesses and disciplines

He has created his company called Profit Under Pressure LLC and has written the new book

Unbreakable Confidence. And now this coming Sunday night, October 10th at 8 p.m. Eastern

Standard Time. He will be in concert with Seth Brodetsky as part of his Seth Concert series

that streams right here at Broadway World. Please say hello to my friend, Justin Garini

Hi, Richard. It's so great to be virtually with you again. And I don't even know if we need to

have the interview after that wonderful intro. That's it. That's all everybody needs to know

right? That's it. Your life flashing by. You're like, wow, you're probably thinking 30-year career

First of all, where are you, my friend, and how are you? how are any of us really um i am actually in my home normally i would be in an office with a nice

fancy dancy setup and a beautiful microphone but um i gave that up because i'm gonna go out on the

road uh with a new show and i'm currently in my daughter's bedroom you may hear my children who

are uh both are being virtually schooled at the moment i want that door right there might open at

some point i mean this is the new reality that we're living in right but um yeah i'm here in my

16-year-old daughter's room and right on cue my son walks into the room of the interview. Bob

I'm in an interview. Thank you. Thank you. I love this. That's right there, right? Real life

right? This is the reality show. So yeah, but I'm super excited to be doing this concert with Seth

I have always been a huge fan of Seth's, you know, whether he's just being a brilliant musician or

breaking down the songs that we know and love in theater. And now I get to actually be in person with him and sing

And we're going to have an awesome time. Well, we'll start with that then. Okay, this coming Sunday night, October 10th at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

you will be in concert with Jeff Rodeski. How excited are you? You know what

I'm really excited because this is the first time. I mean, again, it's like, think like 18 plus for some of us months

since we've really gotten to either be clapped at or to really get up on a stage and perform

And we've done so much of it virtually. And thank goodness so much of it's coming back

and being live again. But with my schedule being the way it is

and going all over the place, I've been traveling all over the country, fortunately, because that's opened back up for me

This was the only date that we could do this. And I was just like, yes

I said, yes, because just Seth alone, I've been on his XM show, Sirius show

I've gotten to do wonderful things with Stars in the House with him. And I've always been like, let's – can we just do something together

Anything, right? I'll take the cruise. Can we do the cruise? Whatever it is. Like I've always wanted to work with him and now we have the chance to do it

And what's really fun is that I'm going to have the chance to tell maybe an audience who hasn't heard it a lot of sort of juicy behind-the-scenes stories from American Idol

a lot of really influential stories about how I got into this business, my origin story

if you think of it that way, and get to share some of my most favorite songs from shows that

I've done, from shows I wish I could do. And it's just going to be fun. That's really what I'm most

excited about. It's going to be a fun thing to do on a Sunday night. Okay. Well, let's talk about

I mean, you have done so many incredible shows. You've sung so many incredible songs. Can you

give us a small hint i mean the show's sunday you got to sort of know i think what you mean what can

you tell for sure oh oh for sure um you know we're covering the gambit um for example i mean and you

can google it there is uh a video of my very first american idol audition and what i sang in the

audition we're going to sing that and i'm going to tell the story of what it was like because i mean

it's it's television history 30 million people 50 million people at one point on the finale were

watching Kelly and I duke it out for the crown. And over that time, you know, that was 2002

10,000 people nationwide auditioned for the show in 2002. The next year and year beyond that

it ballooned to a hundred thousand people per city. And so it was just one of these things that

took off. And so there's a lot of stories that I can share with that. And so who's loving you by

The Jackson 5 is one of the songs I'm going to be singing. Someone is Waiting from Company is one of my favorite roles I've ever played

I played that at the Bucks County Playhouse as Bobby. And there are just a bunch of great songs

One behind the scenes story really super quick is where I messed up in front of 30 million viewers on live television and nobody knew it

I completely botched one of the most iconic songs in jazz history

And so I'm going to sing that song. And as I'm singing the song, I'm going to stop, show you exactly where I messed up, how I messed it up

And maybe we might even throw some video of the live version of me doing it live

So, again, it's just going to be this fun, interactive, behind-the-scenes look at so many of the things that I've been able to do and so many of the stories that people don't know about how I made it through barely alive sometimes

I love that, that you did this jazz stander that everybody knows, but you probably made it your own, which I know what you're talking about

I watched The Journey, but I was like, oh, he made it his own, but no one picked up on it

No, and thank goodness social media didn't exist the way it does now, right

Because I think we had like MSN message boards back in the day, like remember those

And I think maybe somebody mentioned it, but it got buried. whereas now you make a mistake like that

and it gets broadcast to every corner of the earth. Yeah, 30 million people to watch your mistake now

Exactly. Oh my God, MSN, like you said, that's crazy. Those message boards and never downloading

I don't know if it was for you. You'd watch the top of someone's head come in

and then you'd get down to the forehead and you'd wait, oh, the eyes are coming. Let me go have a lot

Five, 10 minutes, right? five, 10 minutes at the least five, 10 minutes for, for any sort of picture and sharing like that

And, and that, you know, just being in my daughter's room here makes me think like

oh my goodness. A, again, thank goodness they didn't have picture phones and all the other

things, right? Because all the dumb choices many of us have made as children, we got away with

and there's no evidence to prove any of it. But just the, I now think like, oh my goodness

what would our communication have been like? How would we have been able to connect to one another had we had those the ability to do that And that why I love even though live performances are coming back which I adore I love the fact that I able to connect once again

with the Broadway world audience, with the Broadway audience, with some pieces, a new audience

and share some of these stories during the concert. What part of your house

where are you going to do this concert from? Where is your stage? With Seth. with Seth. We're going to do it

Seth, I'm going to go to his house, and we're going to do it

together. That's why I'm so excited, because we're actually going to be in person virtually, but he and I are going to share the same

little corner that gets shared. And he's going to be on the keys, and we're actually

even going to do a duet together from a very, very popular

musical, which I'm excited about. A very popular musical which I'm very excited about. A very

green musical. exactly yeah oh see this is all new so you're kicking off his his fall season now which i think

is amazing and yeah second one second performer yeah yeah and you were going to his house to do

this yeah okay so now so during the pandemic what part of your home besides your daughter's bedroom

did you turn into your like sound studio your stage where you had to present yourself

yeah actually it was um a guest room which my wife and i turned into a walk-in closet

and so it was a walk-in closet but I had you know if you ever walk into a photographer's studio they

have like the the backdrop that's on those two you know stands that you put sand bags on well

I had those two stands and I put up a red curtain much like the blue curtain that you have in the

background here but it was the you know the stereotypical red curtain and that was where I

did it and literally I was like crammed into the back of the room because I had all my big and I

I mean, I didn't have – right now I have this really cool like star thing that goes over the camera now

It's like almost like a selfie light. But I had like the big photographer's umbrella things

And if you had seen it, like right here, there was clothes and clothes just outside the shot, right

And so during the pandemic, that was where I was doing a stream yard show

That's where I was doing a lot of my coaching and trainings. And it just was – it was like this

And then eventually I just said, you know what? I was fortunate enough to be able to get some work and to make some moves

And I was like, let me get an office where I have some more space and I'm able to do that

And so it was wild. But I had to put up the blue background when I was doing self tapes

I mean, and literally it was just like trying to Rubik's cube the room to make sure that everything fit

It was wild. Because everybody had their little area. They're like, don't look to the left. Don't look to the right

I mean, people would like move their cameras. I mean, you know. Yeah. That level is like, I just moved into my house

I have this little area where I can put a pretty picture behind it, a plant and a lamp. But there's a million boxes to the left, there's a million boxes to the right

And we made it work. That's the beautiful thing. As much as the pandemic and quarantine has taken a toll on our physical and our mental health and the world in general, there is something beautiful about humanity

How, especially in the arts, people who are creative, right? we made it work and we were still able to serve we were still able to follow our passion we were

still able to perform and give to this wonderful community and receive you know claps and applause

rather in the comments and all this stuff so I think it's just a beautiful testament to to the

creative minds in this community. And I'm just excited to be able to, again

like get together in person with Seth and yet still be able to reach the

entire Broadway world, the global audience. So I'm excited. Because, you know

one of the positives about the pandemic is that anybody anywhere in the world

can buy a ticket to your show and watch you all at the same time

Yeah. And that's got to make you feel so great. Yeah. It's

it's like this weird sort of it's almost like American Idol in the sense of in the studio

we had we were at CBS Television City which is funny because it was Fox show

but we were at CBS Television City and in the studio there's probably about 100 people

which is great like 100 people that's nothing to sneeze at but camera

camera, camera, camera, big jib and behind the camera were 30 million people

And I had to stop myself from thinking about that because how do you fit

Okay. We can imagine a hundred people in a room, right? You can imagine even 50 to 70,000 people in a stadium, right

For like a football game or a college football or something like that. But when you get up to a certain number, it just becomes a number

Like 30, what? And then you start to go into logic lock. So I feel it's almost like the same way because of the pandemic, because of the reach that Broadway world has and the fact that we are now so connected and that Broadway is not just and never has been, but it's not just in Manhattan

Now it's something that is so much more accessible and so many more people have been forced almost to become digital

I love the fact that I have to kind of just remind myself like, OK, I'm in the room with Seth

We're here in the moment. It is what it is. And no matter how many people are watching, it still ends up being this beautiful and intimate moment that we all get to share together

All right. I can only imagine what it's going to be like having the two of you together because you never know where Seth is going to go

But I think you're right. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the again, that creative Seth is so I mean, he's a brilliant musician

Right. And then on top of that, he is a host and a personality and he understands how to make a show

I mean, literally in terms of disaster in the musical. Right. But also in his serious show as well

Like he knows how to pull the best out of it. Even in the notes that he sent me, I sent him all the songs

He's like, OK, hey, what's the map for this and what do we do? There's always so much because we could easily just get together and, you know, sing some songs around the piano

But like there's always the desire to make sure that we give a great experience to the audience, an entertainment experience

And so like you don't know where it's going to go. You may just throw in some things randomly, but you won't know unless you're there

Okay. Have you chosen what you're going to wear yet? No. I love this

You're like, no, I'll find something in the closet. No. You know, literally like honestly, again, my schedule has been so wild

I just was doing a teaching residency for a week at Pace University for their musical theater

program, which has, they have, they have done such a wonderful job with their program

And now I'm directing as a part of that residency, I'm directing a new musical

the reading of a new musical, which has literally been Tuesday, Wednesday. Today will be our last

thing. Then Friday we put it on. I have Saturday rebreathe, Sunday is the Seth concert. And then I

I go down to Myrtle Beach to host a marketing conference for a week

And then right after the day I get home I start rehearsals for a new musical which should be announced very soon which I very excited about Okay so we have to go back to the pandemic for a second because you know all of a sudden you were in rehearsal for the Britney Spears musical

Everybody, I mean, we were in that building. We were in on some floor. I stuck on your floor and they didn't have the paper on the window

And I was like, I'm going to stand here and watch you all do a number

We are so excited for this. Then everything shut down. What I want to ask you, how were you able to process that loss right away? Because none of us knew early on if this was two weeks. I mean, and loss is a big thing. And I've spoken to many people during this pandemic and many people had to process what was happening to them being a creative and how they could turn a negative into a positive, which we'll get into your book and everything else. But how were you able to deal with that loss

You know what? For the first two to three weeks, I literally walked around in a brain fog. I couldn't process it. It was like, you know, you think the stages of grief, right? You know, it's like, I was so in denial. And there was a part of me that just was like, I don't think about this. I'm just gonna just go off and, you know, binge watch this or like, you know, have a drink or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, just not think about it

And then eventually, and I think as many of the creatives, it took different amounts of time for different people, right? But I think eventually you just hit this place of threshold where you're like, I can't stand the way I feel anymore. And I'm going to do something about it. Or you don't. Or you choose not to. And there are many people who just chose to just check out and just be checked out. Maybe that was what they needed, right, for their mental health

And yet I got to this place and many of us in the industry got to this place

We were like, okay, we have to do something, right? We not only have to do something for ourselves

but there are people who might not be as fortunate as we are when it comes to work

as fortunate as we are when it comes to the ability to influence, as fortunate as we are when it comes to the fact that we've saved up money

And that was, again, where Seth was such a huge leader, where Broadway World was such a huge leader, when so many of the people in our industry who are the influencers decided to say, we're going to take this pain and we're going to bind together

We're going to come together. And, you know, pain shared is pain divided. And that's what we did

And we ended up coming together to create such a wonderful, loving

I mean, just just I don't want to say because we've always been a community, but there was an emphasis on that

And we we really ended up raising awareness for the fact, like, for example, the Actors Fund doesn't just fund actors

You know what I mean? Right. Like if you had anything to do with the theater and so many people who didn't have the ability to be the actor, you know, the people who are in the house or working backstage and whatnot

We were able to come together and to create this thing that lifted all of us

And so for me, I chose to serve in the sense of, okay, I wrote this book. My very first book

which is a bestseller, was Audition Secrets. I said, okay, look, we have this time off. There

are so many challenges and so many people who have come to me and I've just coached them in the past

like it's the thing, right? But now I have this huge swath of open time. What happens if I double

down in my coaching? What happens if I double down and I create a course? What happens if I go

and I really, really push this book and these concepts? And so I started creating virtual

classes for audition secrets and learning and growing and really delving into a lot of the

parts of show business, the actual business part of show business that many of us don't

especially actors, singers, and dancers that we don't think about as much. And so, you know, I was able to work with wonderful people like Ken Davenport

and obviously Seth and just create some really fun stuff for singers, actors

dancers, and creatives to be able to get a hold of. And then the undercurrent of that as I wrap this up is the conversation going deeper

became about confidence. And what confidence is, how to build it, how to destroy it

And the fact that the pandemic and everything that we've been through for the past 18 plus months has dinged so much of our confidence

And so how do we get that back as we reemerge into this new world and as we move forward and get back to some semblance of normal

Well, let's talk about the book because it's called, the name of the book

Unbreakable. Oh, so there's two books. There's Audition Secrets, which is really mostly for singers, actors, and dancers. And obviously it's all about auditioning and how to book more gigs and how to walk into the room and level the playing field and own your own power

But then Unbreakable Confidence, the book that I'm currently writing right now, goes deeper into the conversation of what confidence is. And just briefly, there's a lot of myths around confidence

People think you're either born with it or you're not born with it, right? Not the case. You have to have years of experience, decades of experience to be able to really confidently speak to something or to coach someone on something or to consult with someone on something. Not true

or that you have to have a piece of paper with letters behind your name, which is great, all great, nothing wrong with that

But those myths are not true. Confidence is a skill, just like chewing gum without swallowing it, just like doing this thing

It's a skill that anyone can learn. And one of the best ways that I can describe confidence is by looking at the word itself

When you look at the root word of confidence, it is confide

The English root word is to confide, right? And to confide means to trust, which is why we tell our secrets to a confided, a confidant, someone we trust

So when we don't have self-confidence, it just means we don't trust ourselves. And there's so many things that come along, things that have happened to our body, right

And during the pandemic, we can't even trust the air, things that happen in our relationships

things that happen in our spiritual connection and in our business that cause us not to trust

ourselves. So one of my missions is to help people to learn how to trust themselves so that they can

ask for what they want, go after what they want and recognize the patterns that come up that most

people see as reasons to stop are ultimately when we trust ourselves, reasons to push forward

reasons to grow and reasons to ultimately get what it is that you deserve to have in your life

I love that. So this second book is not done yet. It's not done yet. Yeah, no, no, no

It's not done yet. It'll probably be done first quarter of next year. Oh, I love this

But you also started your company called Profit Under Pressure. Yes. LLC

What is that? How can people find out about that? Yeah, sure. I mean you can go to justinguarine or profitunderpressure And really what that is is it an homage might be too big of a word but like it just a little nod and a wink to what it is that you me and pretty much everybody else in the creative field does

We are the people who profit under pressure, whether it's an audition or an interview or a live, whatever it is, right

Like that is pressure that most people will run screaming with their hair on fire away from

And like the first responders, and I'm not comparing us to first responders, the wonderful job that they do

But like that, we are trained to run towards the danger. We are trained to run towards the pressure

And ultimately, how do we maximize our profit from that? And profit is not necessarily just financially, but profit is exposure

Profit is influence. Profit is all those things that we leverage in order to make our living

And so that was why I want to say Profit Under Pressure LLC. And so if you want to find out more

about that, what is that I do, the speaking engagements that I have done and that I'm also

available for at least virtually now with my schedule, you can just go to justinguarini.com

If you can't spell that, look up the guy with the hair from American Idol. That'll work. And then

or profitunderpressure.com. Because you've coached and mentored many, many, I mean, presidents of companies and all this stuff. I mean, that's amazing. It's wild. Yeah. It's really

wild. And I love it. If you can't tell, I'm a little passionate about confidence. I'm a little

passionate about speaking. And what I've learned is that, oh, wait, all these kooky experiences

that I've had that you talked about, it's all a part of the lineage. And I'm going to talk about

this actually in the show with Seth, you know, I grew up as the son of a chief of police in Atlanta

highly politicized and political position. And as the son of a woman who was a CNN anchor woman

when it first started up, right? So the lights, the cameras, the having to perform under pressure

all of those things just were, are in my DNA. And so you wonder why I chose what I chose

for a living. And then being able to take all of those experiences, American Idol and Broadway

and Little Swede and all the things that I've done and say, oh, wait, there are entrepreneurs

authors, CEOs, presidents of content who need the skills that we in the creative field have

And we take for granted sometimes. And so that's why I love being able to bring all the wonderful

things that I have learned and that many of us have learned in our own way in the creative field

to bear inside of the game of money and entrepreneurship and leadership inside of

companies. And the ability to, really as simple as it sounds, the ability to convey a message

that has impact. Because what do we do when we step on the stage? What do you do when you're

interviewing people like here or on the red carpet, right? You're getting information. You're

creating a message that has impact on the people who are viewing and causes them to take action

go see the show, come to Broadway world, you know, whatever that is. And so I think it's things that

we sometimes take for granted that have value and great value outside of our business

Yeah. You know, going back to the beginning, I love your family background. What was the defining

moment when you said, I want to be an actor and try to make a living at this

Yes, 100%. It was at Bonnie Bray Elementary School in Virginia, where I was living at the

time with my stepdad and my mom. And they used to have this thing called being a latchkey kid

You remember that? Yeah, latchkey kid, which means like both my parents, where my stepdad

and my mom worked at the time. And I would go home and I would just be the kid who opened the

door and would be there. I mean, can you imagine like nowadays, but like I would just be the kids

and I would sit, watch TV or play a game or do whatever, or play with my friends. But the school

had this great afterschool program for latchkey kids. So it's like, Hey, let's, let's just, you

know, kind of take them and do something fun with them in the schools that they're safe. And one day somebody wheeled in an AV cart with a TV that was strapped down and VHS player

And they popped in this VHS. And I'll never forget, the words came up on the screen, West Side Story. And that was it. That was it for me. And I'll tell the rest of that story and what happened afterwards in Sunday's show

But that was it for me when I saw that. And so many of us have those moments, right, where we are so touching. Again, think about that. That was a message. Someone followed their passion and created a message that had impact. Yes, they borrowed from Shakespeare, right? Another beautiful message that had impact

But even better, they took a message and a story hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old that already had impact, filtered it through their own lives, their own experiences, their own abilities, created something that has its own life and its own impact and has changed the lives of, I mean, tens of millions of people around the world since it was created

And like, is that the goal of art? Like, is that the goal of what it is that we do ultimately

And it's just a beautiful experience. And it's part of the reason why I'm here. Yeah. Because, you know, the interesting thing is we read that in fifth grade

We had the copies of the script and we all, that was the book we read in English

Everybody got to do a role. And it was like, oh, this is a play

You know, unlike anything else we'd read as a book, it's like you saw a name and you read stuff

And there were notes like, you know, how you reacted and everything. I was like, oh, this is what theater does

Yes. And it's like, how long ago was that written? And it's still relevant to teenagers, hormonal teenagers today, right

And the parents and the things that we deal with. And so it's a beautiful experience

Obviously, it was for me. And I can't wait to tell more about it on Sunday. Okay. And speaking of popular in that Green Show, was it Wicked, your Broadway debut

No, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Was it? That was your first

Wild. Because I was like, Patti LuPone is my mother and Brian Stokes Mitchell is my father

And, you know, Danny Burstein is in it and Sherry Renee Scott and Laura Benanti and like just the who's the who's who

Like, I mean, the people, you know, the people you don't know who for us are the who's who

Like, I mean, it's just it was wild that first experience. And then I went directly from that into American Idiot, the Green Day musical, which is like complete opposite

You go from this beautiful old world style with all these huge stars who taught me the ropes and the etiquette of that world of theater

And then you go to this young, vibrant, new world show, which is like rock and roll and irreverence

and I learned that set of etiquette. And then from there I went on and I think just after

That was Wicked. I can't remember if it was Romeo and Juliet first or Wicked after that. That is so bizarre

For some reason, I had this vision of you. I remember seeing this picture of you outside the Gershwin Theater as Fiero

And I'm like. Well, I was there. Yeah, I was there for sure. But I think it was maybe my third or fourth show at that point

That is crazy. So you worked on women with all those people and Bart Scher and like watching the musical be created

it was it was such an amazing experience to be a part of that and like i was just so ignorant to

the process because a lot of people don't know that you know they think oh he was on american

idol and then he transitioned into broadway but that's not the case i was supposed to be on

broadway in the lion king and i had this thing i had this moment where it was literal fork in the

Road Moment 2002 that summer where the casting director for Lion King called and was like

hey, because I'd been auditioning for it for years, went to school for musical theater

right? And so called me up. It's like, hey, we've got this role for you

It'll be a Broadway debut, a beautiful chorus role. I mean, at like, you know, 22, what

Like, great. Lion King, a beautiful show. I wanted to be in it

And I was like, yeah, but there's this thing called American Idol

I don't know what it is. I have to go out to L.A. I might get cut in a week. Can I call you back

And so I'll tell that story, the rest of that story on Sunday, because there was a moment where I had to make a choice

And I was there on the set of American Idol, literally having to call and either say, yes, I'm going to make my Broadway debut or no, I'm going to chase after this thing that I may get cut

I wasn't in the top 30. No guarantees. So, yeah, it's a wild story

See, I thought I knew everything about your career. I knew nothing about The Lion King at the early part of this

So, I mean, I'm tuning in on Sunday anyway, but boy, I cannot wait to tune in on all of this

I mean, just what do you remember about your Broadway debut? Because so many people were supposed to make them, then the pandemic happened

And a lot of them are making it down. Like, we were at the sixth opening, finally, the other night. Oh, no

Those women in that show make their Broadway debuts was so exciting

So yours, of course, was Women on the Verge with that incredible cast playing Carlos

I mean, what do you remember? I remember being in the third leg of the wing stage right

And just like, oh, my God, this is happening. Like nothing prepares you for it

And you go out and the nerves are there. And, you know, it's like I've been in front of, what, 30 million people on live television at that point

I had toured all over the country and throughout the world at that point. But then I was in the Belasco Theater, right

Which is only so many seats in there, right? But Broadway, dreams come true

That kid who was the latchkey kid, you know, was like, right

Getting that moment to be that thing that he wanted to be

Knowing that I had become that person who was about to step out onto the stage And it was like thrilling like the literal thrill inside of me that happened I stepped out and I was nervous and I did it And I was like

make sure you do, you know, left and right and five and six and seven. And like, and then it just

flowed after that. It just flowed. Just this thing where you're like, okay, okay. And it's like the

one, the dam breaks. And it's like, there's no going back after that. And that was the feeling

And I'm sure in their own way, everyone who's making their Broadway debut, especially those wonderful and extremely talented women from six who had it snatched from them at the 11th hour, getting to go out there is just like this

it is in a just the dam breaks and you get to take

all of this pent up energy and momentum from 18 plus months and then however many years and months

before that that you've been desiring this thing and you channel it into

the hearts and the minds of people in the audience and there's nothing like

it in the world. It defies, the description I'm giving is in comparison

to the feeling. Because they were great the other night. They said Richard it wasn't right the first time around. It wasn't

supposed to happen then. It was supposed to happen tonight. And it was, and they had the most glorious opening, the most beautiful weather, the most fabulous party

I mean, it was meant to be the night it was. Yeah, exactly

And we're all coming out of this long winter. The longest, the three-year winter

And so, yeah, they opened it. I love it. I think it's like Diane Jackson, all these people

I love it. Slide under her bed. Right. you know you're talking about you started with West Side Story like seeing that that tape you

got to do Romeo and Juliet with Orlando Bloom my goodness and Condola Rashad and so many Jane

Howdy Shell and like just oh my goodness so many amazing people it was uh uh to be able to work with

uh David Laveau yeah uh has just been I mean look I have worked with I mean you know Bart

and I've gotten the chance to work with amazing directors I mean Mark Bruni like

The list goes on and on. And to be able to work under someone as savvy as David and who, you know, while the show unfortunately was not commercially successful, it was beautifully designed

And it was just this modern take on a classic. And yet, you know, it was just – it was so awesome to be able to be Paris, who is like the classic straw man

And yet the way that, you know, David and I spoke about it and the way he was able to help craft the way I approached it made it so much more fulfilling to play Paris

instead of just being the guy who loses, right? And so it was an awesome experience to say the least

You know, you may not, you said it wasn't a big success, but it was successful for a lot of people

because it introduced a whole new audience to the theater because they were going to see someone like Orlando Bloom who they knew from the movies And they were like when I opened that play in fifth grade they like oh this is live theater I love this David made it accessible to a younger

audience. And it changed the minds of those people who are now going to the theater over and over and

over. 100%. And that is what you want. You want to be able to take and create a relevant message

I mean, whether you're a marketer, whether you're creative, whatever that is, it's just making sure that your message is relevant to the audience that you're going after

And, you know, we've had so many periods of, you know, when you of just like crushing moments in in the arts

You know, the AIDS pandemic stole so many of our creative souls and the patrons as well who came

Right. And then, you know, you go along from there and you look at this pandemic

You know, Terrence McNally and like so many, again, so many of our finest, finest, finest contributors and creators are lost

And then the people even just weren't able to show up. Right. So much

And then, you know, now to be able to come out of this again, long winter and to be able to create experiences like the concert on Sunday that's going to be live here on Broadway World and not not be taped

I mean, it is like live, live those live experiences to be able to have six, an entire cast of women come out and do something that is modern and empowering

and then like we were talking about with Romeo and Juliet like classic banger written forever ago

to be able to make those things accessible to a new audience and to create a message that has impact

and reaches new people so that they continue or they become the next generation

of creators and patrons of an art form that's been dying for 4,000 years

you know what I mean? Well, we're just about out of time But I wanted to ask you, what have you learned about yourself during this pandemic

I have learned that there are there have been so many weaknesses that I've gotten away with a lot of stuff

And the way I like to, especially my coaching, break down life is, you know, your body, your spirituality, your relationships and your business

And I have seen in the pandemic where I had this amazing national television commercial and I have been able to get away with things financially because of that

Because it's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's happening. Great. Everything's clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking

And then when it all gets shut off, you're like, oh, wait, all these things that I was able to ignore, I didn't see

So I was able to attack those during the pandemic with my body

right? Like the exposure and the fact that I was able to avoid COVID for like a year

And then of course I went out and I hosted something in LA and managed to, I mean, I'm

fully vaccinated but I managed to pick it up and then boom had to go through that And that was a whole other thing where I came out of it Unfortunately I fully recovered It was a while ago But like you know I was able to be like oh okay here are some of the challenges that I missed in my body

And so on and so forth. So I realized there are weaknesses in my game that like, oh, this time off has allowed me to strengthen the foundation so that I can build back even better

Beautiful. We have to imagine a little sweet for a second. But Diet Dr. Pepper Commercial

I was obsessed when they came on TV. It's like, there's my friend. There's my friend

I'm like, that must have been the craziest thing to do because I'm sure people recognized you everywhere you went

Yeah, it was weird. I ended up just doing this audition. And the greatest thing that could happen

and I'll tell the story on Sunday, the greatest thing that could happen was that I just didn't care

because I was like, there's no way I'm getting this. So I'm going to go in and have fun. I cared about doing a good job

But I was like, let me have some fun. And now seven years later, I get to have fun all the time with that amazing character

See, I love what you just said. You took the pressure off this. You said, I'm just going to go in and have fun and present to them the craft that I do and I have

And I'm just going to do it. And you got it. Yes, I know. Right. Like it just was it was it just has been so much fun

And I can't wait to to tell you the story behind all of it

I hope you do some Little Sweet on Sunday too. I mean, you should put a whole show together

We'll see what happens. Justin Green is Little Sweet. That's your Broadway cares benefit or something

That's a whole other chapter of your life. Exactly. Listen, Justin, I have known you from the very beginning

And like I said, this has been so thrilling to catch up with you again. Yeah, I thank you so very much

Thank you for being so supportive. And I always love seeing you, whether it's on a red carpet or when we were in person

And I just want to thank you for being so supportive of me and of course of this entire community and always asking questions that are just go beyond the regular sort of stuff and getting into why we do things, how we feel about things, and just like always being one of those people who promotes the unity of our community

So thank you for that. Oh, you're welcome. You make magic, what you all do. You make magic eight times a week

or you make magic on TV or something, or you just heal people and help them

with this wonderful stuff that you're doing now with your coaching. So once again, Justin will be live in concert

with Seth Rodesky, live, the two of them together. This Sunday night, October 10th

at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the Seth Concert Series is produced by Mark Cortelli

and is sponsored by Broadway World and StreamYard. Tickets are available at Broadway World Events

and at SethConcerts.com. Just Google Justin Garini. You'll get tickets to this thing

It's going to be an incredible night because there are stories I thought I knew that I don't know that I cannot hear

And like I said, I love that you're in your daughter's room. And I'm sure they're not going to say, Daddy, I want my room back, right

I know. She's in school right now. Thank goodness. But, yeah. But thank you so much

I can't wait to see everyone on Sunday. And we're going to have an amazing time

So make sure you show up. Take care, everybody. See you soon. And for all your theater coverage, it's BroadwayWorld.com

Take care