“It’s different with movies: People get to write it off because it’s exploring one perspective and not saying it’s right or wrong. As someone who has to go out and speak about my music and be the face of it—am I glorifying potentially harmful behaviors?” he asks, rhetorically.

Sivan is no stranger to acting, having appeared as a young Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and as the lead in a South African film trilogy, Spud. This September, he’ll be seen as an ensemble member in the Joel Edgerton-directed film Boy Erased, based off a memoir of the same name. The book follows Jared, played by Lucas Hedges, who is outed to his Baptist pastor father and sent to a gay conversion therapy program. “There’s sort of an ensemble cast of characters who have all been sent to the same camp, and I play one of the boys,” he says.

“It’s an ideal role in every way possible. It was so exciting to me—and terrifying. The most important thing is that I was a part of a really special movie that is hopefully going to do a lot of good,” he says of the experience. Sivan also contributed a song, “Strawberries & Cigarettes,” for another film doing a lot of good for the LGBTQ community: the recently released Love, Simon, a touching, hilarious, and surprisingly educational film all about being outed in high school. “I love that movie so much,” he laughs recalling seeing it for the first time. “I try to explain to people who haven’t seen it that it’s a teen movie—know that going in. It’s something written for younger people, but so was Mean Girls.” Sivan, though, never had a typical high school experience.