Listen: Justin Bell Guarini Talks AMERICAN IDOL, Broadway, and More on LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

Little Known Facts is a weekly podcast hosted by stage and film actress Ilana Levine. With over 250 interviews to date with today's most successful artists, Levine engages her celebrity guests in intimate conversations that are hilarious, vulnerable, revealing and inspiring. Ilana's unique brand of celebrity interview has been called "Podcast Vérité," because her conversations are unfiltered, raw, honest and uniquely funny.

This week's episode features Justin Bell Guarini who talked about his career kickoff on American Idol, Broadway credits, and more!

"I love to tell the story of how I was sitting in my car, waiting to go into work, I was working at a Bar and Bat Mitzvah company called Cutting Edge Entertainment, which still exists," Justin shared. "I'm sitting and I have just about a week before, maybe two weeks, gotten this yellow piece of paper that they said was a golden ticket... Years before then I was auditioning for Broadway. I went to school for musical theatre..."

"Fast forward to sitting in my car...the phone rings and its Bender Casting who casts The Lion King..." he said. "I'm like 'there's a show in L.A. I have to do, can I call you back in a week, because I might get cut?' and they said 'yeah, sure.'"

"I get down to being, not even in the top 30, there were maybe 90 of us left, and I had one of those watershed moments in my life," he continues. "I thought to myself 'I've got to make a choice, because I have to call these people... and say yes or no' and that's when I just started bawling... There was just this little voice that said to me 'do this. this is right.' and instead of fighting it and instead of questioning it, I just decided to listen."

"I called up Bender Casting and said 'I think I'm going to go with this other thing', being American Idol. And fortunately, I made it through American Idol."

Listen to the full episode below!

Justin Bell Guarini's robust performance career launched with the first season of American Idol in 2002. His stage and screen appearances since then include Broadway productions of American Idiot, InTransit, Paint Your Wagon, Romeo and Juliet, Wicked, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Justin has hosted nationally broadcasted shows like Idol Wrap and Idol Tonight along with live red carpet events for the TV Guide Network, the Oscars, the Emmys, and the Grammys. He continues to reprise his role as the lovable "Lil' Sweet" in the award winning national commercial campaign for Diet Dr. Pepper.

In 2019, Justin founded The Warrior Artist Alliance (Warrior Artist Empire LLC) to help performers achieve the success they deserve in a challenging industry. He shares his tips, tricks, breadth of experience, and warrior mindset with a community of performers through podcasts, his best selling book "Audition Secrets", blogs, and dynamic training programs.