Former American Idol runner-up Justin Guarini says he “skips meals” so his family can eat
American Idol alum Justin Guarini, who was runner-up to Kelly Clarkson in the first season of the hit competition singing show, is going through a rough time. Just last Sunday he appeared on Oprah’s Where Are They Now Show describing how hard it was to experience failure after achieving pretty massive success in the world of pop music. He also took to his website this week to vent about his family not always having enough food to eat, and being terrified of his financial situation. After People magazine and other sites picked up his blog posting, he deleted it and complained Twitter. “Obviously you completely missed the point of my letter @peoplemag,” he tweeted. “News isn’t news anymore, and I’m nowhere near poverty. #twistedmytruth’.”
He actually found out that he was dropped from his record label and management team when he heard Tina Fey make a joke about it on Saturday Night Live. He said his time on American Idol did “wonders” for his career, but was also “extremely damaging” for his life. He says he dealt with a “horrible depression,” and realized that he wasn’t living the dream he thought he was living.
After the American Idol high he filmed From Justin to Kelly, which bombed at the box office. He also recorded his self-titled CD, and says he didn’t know himself as an artist, and got distracted by others telling him what to do with it. He called the CD inauthentic, and says that’s why it didn’t sell well.
He felt like everyone criticized everything he did, and went into a deep depression where he couldn’t get out of bed.
The 34-year-old is now happily married with two kids to wife Reina Capodici, but Wednesday morning he revealed that he and his family are struggling. He says he goes “days skipping meals in order to make sure I have enough. To make sure my children and my wife have enough.”
“I’m unafraid to say that I am terrified,” he wrote. “I am struggling to make each day meet the next without breaking down and curling up.”
Despite these feelings and circumstances Guarini appreciates what really matters: his family. “Now I rent a home filled with love. I have a wife whom I love and who loves me (me!) and who lifts me up. Children who give me cherubic-lipped kisses before I leave for work and who are the most delicious morsels of joy and peace and prosperity.” He told a fan in the comments section “I am a pretty wealthy individual. I have more riches than I can count. Most of them come in the form of smiles and drool … but they make me feel like a gazillionaire!”
He reportedly ended his blog saying that he was being honest about his financial situation to “reintroduce” himself to the public. “[I hope to] regain and surpass all that I had before…but this time with a family,” he wrote. Justin has a gig coming up on Broadway as Paris in Romeo And Juliet alongside Orlando Bloom.
