Vivek Shraya on How to Fail as a Popstar — and own it

Vivek Shraya has just come from a photoshoot for her new TV show, How to Fail as a Popstar, when we hop on a phone call. She's been talking to journalists and promoting her eight-episode series set to premiere on CBC Gem on Oct. 13. It's a big moment for her, and not one you'd expect to associate with failure. But that's exactly what Shraya, an artist, author, musician and academic, intends to share with audiences. 

"I hope that [the series] really creates more conversation and space for people to think about their own failures and to own them, talk about them, discuss them," she says. 

How to Fail as a Popstar is an autobiographical story that debuted as a one-woman play in 2019, was published as a book in 2021 and is now being brought to the screen. 

Shraya grew up as a queer brown boy in Edmonton who first found his voice singing at the local Sri Sathya Sai Baba Centre. He later signed up for his school's open mic and a singing competition at the mall, hoping to be discovered. Spoiler alert: as the title suggests, Shraya's dreams did not come true. But years later, she went on to win a Canadian Screen Award, get nominated for a Polaris Music Prize, write a bestselling book and start an award-winning publishing imprint called VS. Books. But she never became a popstar. 

Ahead of the show's premiere, I spoke with Shraya, now in her 40s, about her comfort level with failure, encouraging others to welcome it — and why embracing success is still challenging. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

You've shared your story as a play, a book and now a TV series. Why do you think this story will resonate now?

It's interesting with Popstar that it's been able to have so many iterations. And I think it speaks volumes about the fact that there is a hunger for more stories about failure, especially in a culture that's so obsessed with success stories and popularity and likeability. We just really don't create enough space for conversations around disappointment. 

I hope the show resonates in a different way than the play and the book, because it's not just me telling the story anymore. We have a wonderful, brilliant cast who's telling the story, and you get to follow the journey. 

I imagine you're in a bit of a weird space of wanting a show that talks about accepting failure to succeed. 

Exactly!… Increasingly, it feels harder and harder to talk about being a failure when you have a TV show. It's a strange juxtaposition. 

In the forward for the How to Fail as a Popstar book, Canadian Stage artistic director Brendan Healy said one of the things he learned from your performance is about owning our failures. What does owning failure mean to you?

A lot of people who met me in my 30s actually had no idea that I had rigorously pursued a music career. I was still making music, but I felt kind of embarrassed about it, you know, it felt a little hobby-ish. And, in a lot of ways, one of the big reasons why I ended up making this show and wanting to tell this story is because I didn't want to feel that shame anymore. I wanted to acknowledge that I had wanted something really badly, and it hadn't worked out. I think that's what it means to own failure.

How did you initially learn what failure is, or what it means to fail at something? 

It was around the time I turned 30, where I'd been pursuing music actively for about eight or nine years. And around that time, it started to hit me that I wasn't entitled to success. There is this narrative, especially in biopics, where it was, like, "I always knew I was destined for blah, blah," right?... When I turned 30, it was the first time that I had ever considered the possibility that it might not work out.… It was so unsettling that I didn't really allow myself to admit it until I started working on the show almost, like, a decade later. 

How to Fail as a Popstar also represents your experience as an Indian Canadian in Edmonton and a child of immigrants. Have you noticed cultural differences around how people approach or accept failure? 

I mean, one of the most difficult conversations of the project was with my mom. I remember first telling her I was working on a project called How to Fail as a Popstar, and she was so uncomfortable. She was like, "Fail? What do you mean? You have a beautiful voice and you still sing all the time." And I actually felt a lot of guilt because if you watch the show, in a lot of ways, the character of my mom is the star. I was so lucky to have a mom who was so supportive and loving in her way. And I think it's actually quite ungrateful as a child of an immigrant who has given so much for you to then turn around and be like, yeah, I failed. In some ways, at least in that moment, I felt like my job as the child of someone who's done so much for me is actually to almost protect the dream or protect the facade of the dream.  

Have you had any followup conversations with your mom since?

Not specifically about the title. I showed her a couple scenes from the show and she cried. I don't think she's connecting to the fact that it's about me or her.… But I find it really funny how often she compliments "that lady" [meaning Ayesha Mansur Gonsalves, who plays Vivek's mother, Chandrika, in the show]. I'm hoping that secretly, she is just complimenting herself. 

That's kind of the flip side of failure. We also don't brag about our accomplishments. 

Oh my God, there was a moment when we were filming Popstar and they had to create a university office. So they had my books, and, you know, I've published a few, and they put one of each in every corner. I was so embarrassed. I made them take it down. I was hiding, and people were laughing. They're like, "I don't understand, why aren't you proud of the fact that you've, like, published books?" But again, it feels very cultural. My mom wasn't allowed to compliment us; if she did, it would be invoking the evil eye. Even being on social media, I kind of have to disconnect. My posts are seldom, like, "I'm so amazing!" I look at younger people posting on social media, and they're like, "I'm the f--king shit." And I'm just like, wow, like, please teach me. 

A lot of the time, our idea of success, especially in the arts, is tied to productivity and commercial success. As a multiplatform artist, how has the need to achieve a certain type of success influenced your work?

One of the things I've really struggled with is, like, who am I outside of my work? It consumes so much of my life and my thinking. I love my job, I love being an artist, I love making things. But it also means that in the spaces between projects, I feel the pressure to be making when I'm not inspired, and I have to really push against that. I don't want to be someone who's just making for the sake of making. It's one of the reasons why I struggle with the word "content." This isn't to slag people who do that, everyone comes to their jobs in different ways, but when I hear that word, it often feels like content for the sake of content, or for the sake of engagement. And I don't want to just be creating something to put on the internet. 

What I've been trying to do is actually find a hobby, like forcing myself to do things that I'm bad at.… I actually started taking hip-hop lessons. And I'm so bad at it. And it's so nice — speaking of failure — it's nice to be really bad at something because I find that I just enjoy it. I'm not thinking about my creative practice. I'm not thinking about how to monetize it in any way. It gets to be just for me.