Vivek Shraya doesn’t want you to repeat her resume back to her. 

Today, Shraya is here to talk about the one that got away – her lifelong dream of pop stardom that never fully materialized. 

Shraya’s latest addition to her decorated CV is How To Fail as a Popstar, a CBC Gem original series based on Shraya’s hit play and book of the same name. Popstar is a coming-of-age series that tracks the journey of Vivek, a young queer brown boy from Edmonton as he tries (and fails) to achieve pop stardom — from the perspective of Vivek Shraya herself, the 40-something trans femme artist that boy became.

“I usually go into a project thinking about the key objectives. [For Popstar] of course there was the objective of telling an anti-success story or a story that’s rooted in failure, not in resilience. But another one that I was wanting to tell was a story that features a brown character who is also queer, who’s also trans. But the story not needing to be specifically about those identities,” shares Shraya in a Zoom interview with Loose Lips Mag. 

“I think so often, when you’re marginalized, the expectation is that that’s what the work has to be about. I must talk about my difference, talk about my experience of being othered. And certainly in Popstar, there’s instances of homophobia, there’s instances of misogyny, there’s instances of sexism, and of racism, but those are not the main plot points and they’re not plot devices… I really wanted to be able to just tell a story about a brown kid with big dreams, you know?”

How To Fail as a Popstar is produced by Sphere Media, directed by Vanessa Matsui (Ghost BFF, Letterkenny), and stars two versions of Vivek’s youth—Chris D’Silva as teen Vivek and Adrian Pavone as young adult Vivek. 

You can watch the entire series in the time you might typically spend scrolling through TikTok at night, but you’ll come out the other side much richer. Entirely written by Vivek herself, the show is parsed out into eight 10-minute bite-sized episodes, now available for snacking on CBC’s free streaming service, CBC Gem. 

Shraya and Matsui were connected years ago at a live Mean Girls reading coordinated by fellow Canadian filmmaker Chandler Levak. During the interview process for the CBC Gem iteration of this project, Matsui felt a familiar kinship to the themes of failure in Popstar, having mourned her own dreams of failed superstardom.

“I describe [this show] as a pop-fused meditation on failure that is sprinkled with a lot of love and joy,” says Matsui. 

“I think sometimes what we tend to do is really skip over the grieving period, or just [acknowledging] that the ship that sailed. I think everyone experiences this kind of disappointment to some degree. In my case, it was mourning that I’m not going to be this famous actress that I had originally set out to be but I love directing and I love being the boss. And I think it’s really important for everyone to take a beat.”

Popstar’s exceptional watchability and fluid pacing is in thanks to a delicious recipe of nostalgia (the show is shot with the dreamy gloss of a ‘90s glamour shoot), humour, vulnerable performances, and, of course, a creative team primarily made up of women and women of colour. Nabbing the license to CeCe Peniston’s 1991 hit “Finally” doesn’t hurt either. 

The cast, remarkably, conquers the unimaginable: embodying the spirit of Shraya. D’Silva’s tender performance carries the weight of a young curious teen finding his way; Pavone evokes a subtle gender fluidity and ambiguity that Shraya and Matsui admit was tough to find. 

“Who is little Vivek? Who’s that? She’s singular. She really is. She’s a really special person. I’ve never met anybody like her. In all honesty it was like, ‘How do you find the younger version of a unicorn?’” shares Matsui. “Finding Chris and Adrian [who play teen Vivek and adult Vivek] was a very, very hard search. I’m just so pleased with the work that they did and how dedicated they were. Honestly, I had a dream cast.” 

Popstar is Shraya’s first foray into the world of television. As a celebrated author and artist, she welcomed the collaborative nature of TV. 

“I’ve always been a reactive artist, I’ve always loved the medium of TV.  By the time [this project] got to TV, I was really excited about leaning into fiction,” she shared at a Vancouver screening of How To Fail as a Popstar, presented by VIFF and Out On Screen. 

In our interview, she echoes the statement. 

“I do find writing very lonely, I find it a bit tedious. But with TV, you’re constantly getting notes and people are chiming in. Once we were moving, things happened really quickly. I loved how alive the scripts felt at any given time. I think a big part of it too was the last three years — I’ve just also felt really lonely. Having this project was a way to be surrounded by other talented minds. I found it extremely generative and inspiring.” 

In just 80 minutes, Popstar manages to tell the tale of three love stories: Vivek’s love of music, the love and admiration between Vivek and his longtime companion Sabrina (played by Nadine Bhabha and Aayushma Sapkota), and the unconditional, uncompromising love between a parent and child.

“We hear lots of negativity about parents who are so unsupportive of their children when they come out of the binary. And this is not one of those stories. This is a really joyful story. So I hope people can feel a bit of hope,” adds Matsui. 

Hope is the operative word for Shraya. She isn’t empowered by rejection, she shares — and the idea of revenge isn’t much of a motivator for her. The multi-hyphenate artist, Polaris Music Prize nominee and now television show creator, is fueled by the work. 

Her wins are grand and sparkly—Vanity Fair cited her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men as “cultural rocket fuel,” after all—but her dream of sold-out arenas and platinum records are in the rearview, for now.

“As much as I still would have loved to have been a One Hit Wonder, I console myself by [acknowledging that I got to make] this wonderful, amazing, rare thing that very few people get to do. All jokes aside, what an amazing consolation prize, very few people get to turn their failure into a touring play and then a book and then a TV show,” Shraya concludes. 

“And I hope that’s the big takeaway from the show. That, regardless of failure, it’s still worth trying…I feel a responsibility to my ideas. If you have a burning idea inside you, don’t wait for tomorrow — realize it now.” 

All 10 episodes of How To Fail as a Popstar are now available for streaming on CBC Gem. How To Fail as a Popstar is produced by Sphere Media with support from TELUS Fund, the Bell Fund, and the Shaw Rocket Fund and the assistance of the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit.