‘I thought Cats would change the world’
Neil Mccormick talks to the one-man hit factory about Tiktok, the power of positive thinking and starring in a feline flop
Jason Derulo has been having a good lockdown. “I find everything better in the pandemic, everything is good now!” the American multimedia pop superstar admits in a gust of laughter. “I haven’t had so much fun in a long time!”
Derulo is talking to me via Zoom from a room full of video monitors at his luxuriously appointed mansion in Los Angeles. It is a home familiar to his 31million followers on social media app Tiktok, where they can watch short goofy clips of Derulo dancing, cooking, singing, joking, pratfalling and getting up to all kinds of silliness in his vast modern kitchen, his luxurious living room, or around the 75ft outdoor swimming pool that features a bridge to a pergola with built-in bar.
“I’ve been building this house for four years now and when I just got to the final stages of being almost done, the pandemic hit and I’m able to enjoy my place!” says Derulo with unabashed delight. He is the first musician I have spoken to since Covid-19 struck who is prepared to admit that he doesn’t miss the rigours of touring. “It’s incredible. Last year, I only spent 60 days at home. To be here for months at a time, man, I’ve been so happy!”
Derulo is wearing a vest that shows off his muscular physique, and sports diamond ear studs and gold chains. His beard is neatly trimmed, his smile is wide, and he exudes upbeat power-of-positivethinking American showbiz energy to a frankly cheesy extent. “I’m a very positive person,” he agrees. “The negative things that happen in my life, I don’t want to put too much weight on.” Indeed, he struggles to think of a negative thing to illustrate this remark. The best he can come up with is: “Say if I’m having a bad day ’cos I’ve had an argument with my mom, I just take every negative thing with a grain of salt, and I’m like, ‘OK, cool, keep going, yeah!’”
To be fair, Derulo has plenty to be positive about. Born Jason Desrouleaux in Florida in 1989 to Haitian parents, he has been active as a songwriter, producer and singer since 2009, specialising in a brash and melodious style of R’N’B pop with a tone of Pg-rated raunchiness. His numbers (as they say in the music business) are impressive: over 190million record sales, six billion streams, and five number one singles here in the UK, where he seems especially popular. Yet at 30 years old, he was considered a bit of an uncool entertainment all-rounder, treated as a figure of fun for his silly dance routines and showboating performance as vain feline Rum Tum Tugger in box office disaster Cats.
Then he started using Chineseowned video-sharing app Tiktok and his popularity skyrocketed, bringing him a new, young audience. Derulo is the second most popular celebrity on the platform, close behind his moviestar friend Will Smith. He notches up around a billion views per month. “I’ve been able to show more of who I am on Tiktok,” he says. “I was an arts kid, so I studied all kinds of entertainment my whole life, and this is like a huge stage.”
Derulo has thrown himself into his new role as “King of Tiktok” (his phrase) during the pandemic, churning out sharply edited content at the rate of around six posts a day with a team including photographer David Strib, content creator Max Goodrich and Derulo’s fitness instructor girlfriend Jena Frumes.
A video of Derulo being intercepted by Frumes while about to pat her bottom has over 123million views. “It’s a lot like songwriting in terms of ideas being sparked. I get a concept from life but then you have to go into the studio and develop it.” His home has a state-of-the-art recording studio, photo studio and sound stage. He has parlayed social media success into boosting his musical career, adapting a 15-second Tiktok dance craze into a fully fledged pop song, Savage Love, which went to number one in 12 countries, including Britain.
“It’s been great to bring in an income from this,” he says. Derulo recently dismissed a story that he earns $75,000 per branded post while hinting the sum was actually much higher. “I don’t see it as any different from when people did commercials, except I can do a lot more volume. Where people used to take all week to shoot one thing, I can shoot like three
‘Everyone knows everything about me – how my room looks, the names of my dogs’
different brand deals in a day.”
When I ask where Derulo would draw the line between his private and public life, he almost seems bemused. “I don’t know that there is a line. People know everything about me, what my room looks like, my girlfriend’s personality, the names of my nieces, my dogs, all of my interests.”
Derulo is just young enough to belong to a generation for whom that kind of exposure is normal. “I was talking to Will Smith about that, cause
he’s been in the game in the era where people guarded their privacy, and now he’s thriving in this world where you share everything. He talked about almost sacrificing his life for people to watch. I think I’ve done the same thing. It’s kind of like a sacrifice.” Really, what can you say to a man prepared to do pratfalls into his swimming pool for the common good? Thank you for your sacrifice, Jason.
To the question of whether he is ever embarrassed by things he shares, Derulo laughs. “Uhm, yeah, absolutely. But I think you have to be willing to be embarrassed to do anything great. I’m putting myself on the line and letting it all hang out: the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Which seems a good time to bring up Cats, perhaps the most universally panned film of recent years, in which
Derulo made his screen debut.
“For the longest time, I was trying to figure out what’s the perfect first role? Cats checked all the boxes. You can’t get a more star-studded cast, you don’t get a more respected director than an Oscar winner, and Rum Tum Tugger is a legacy role, a standout character in a classic musical. Even when I saw the trailer, I got chills down my spine! I thought it was gonna change the world.” He laughs, sheepishly. “It didn’t pan out. With all things that left field, it could either be considered genius or batsh-- crazy. That’s the risk you take. It taught me a lesson. You can’t wait for the perfect moment, cause that might not be your moment. So you’ve just got to go for gold. That’s how I’ll move forward.”
This is Derulo’s power of positive thinking in action. He talks about using “every waking second at your craft to become the best in the world. Everybody wants the same dream, so you’ve got to put way more hours in than everybody else. That’s basically the secret to success.” When I ask when he came to this realisation, he says: “I decided at four years old I was going to be a musician, and I was going to 100 per cent be the best.”
When I ask about President Trump’s threat to ban Tiktok in the US, he shrugs it off. “It’s something that’s added value to my life in terms of happiness, so it would be a sad thing. But I have the number one record in the world! I don’t need the app, I just love it.”
Derulo comes across as charming, sincere and well-intentioned, if oddly innocent in his blinkered view from inside a celebrity bubble. He genuinely seemed to enjoy our interview. “You made me think a lot!” he enthused at the end. And he definitely enjoyed the fact that it was conducted from his sofa via Zoom. “Come on, man! Being able to do amazing interviews like this in the comfort of my own home! I mean, s---! Everything’s better in the pandemic. Why do we need to go back?”