BEVERLY HILLS – Citing the experience as a “massive dream,” rising pop star and part-time actor Troye Sivan took some time out from his busy touring schedule to perform for an audience of assembled press on Monday. Sivan has a small role in Joel Edgerton’s “Boy Erased” and the filmmaker asked the fellow Aussie to contribute a song to the film’s soundtrack. That led to “Revelation,” which is in the race for the Best Original Song Oscar along with a number of other notable contenders “A Star is Born’s” “Shallow” and “Black Panther’s” “All The Stars.”
Sivan wrote the song alongside Jon Thor Birgisson (Jonsi), Troye Sivan & Brett McLaughlin and the version in the film is performed by Sivan and Jonsi.
“Boy Erased” is inspired by the true story of Garrard Conley (changed to Jared for the big screen), a college student whose conservative religious family sent him to a gay conversion therapy program upon discovering he was gay. Lucas Hedges plays Jared while Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe portray his parents. The publicly out Sivan is Gary, one of Jared’s “classmates” in the program.
READ MORE: “Boy Erased” with Nicole Kidman and Lucas Hedges [Telluride Review]
Before performing the track and “The Good Side,” a song from his recent album “Boom” which also is in the film, Sivan spoke of how the opportunity came his way.
“There is this one very, very beautiful scene in the movie where Jared has his first romantic experience,” Sivan says. “And the thing is the experience isn’t a sexual experience at all, it’s just pure curiosity and romance. And it’s so, so, so sweet. I remember when I read it in the script my heart melted and I just felt so relieved for this person who so badly, just as much as anyone else, deserves to feel real love. Not something he has to put on for somebody else, but just a real connection with another person. He’s a 23-year-old guy, that’s what I want for him.”
He continues, “Jonsi had this beautiful piano riff that you’ll hear a bunch of times in the song and he basically said, ‘I don’t know where to take it lyrically.’ And so Joel sent met the scene, it was a rough cut. It was the first bit of the movie I’d seen and it made me so excited to see the rest. And it had this piano underneath it and I got together with my best friend who I write a lot of my music with and we sat in the studio and watched the scene and got chills and the song basically wrote itself in like maximum half an hour. And it’s the song about that moment being a revelation to Jared. When he feels that and it feels so right and the sky doesn’t fall down on him and the world doesn’t stop turning and it’s this moment where maybe he’s O.K. just the way that he is.”
You can watch excerpts from Troye’s performance in the instagram post below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bph6tIPnIjN/?taken-by=gregel17
“Boy Erased” opens in limited release on Friday.