Transcript for Troye Sivan says his new movie has a message for parents

to this," and now he's bringing his acting and musical talents to the powerful new movie "Boy erased." He plays a young man forced to undergo gay conversion therapy and gives co-star Lucas hedges tips on how to survive. Take a look. Play the part. Show them it's working, you're getting better. Fake it until you make it, right? You don't want to end up in one of those houses for any length of time. I've heard the stories and they're not good. That's where you're likely going to end up. Sarah's already there. So, play the part, man. Then once you're home, you got to figure out what to do next. Please welcome troye Sivan. ??? So, for those of you -- for those of you who don't know, I'm going to give you a little background. You started singing and posting videos on YouTube when you were 12. Hm-mm. And since then your life has kind of changed a bit. You have over 9 million social media followers and youalbum, and you performed on "Saturday night live." How's all this feeling? I mean, it's crazy. Very, very, very often I take a moment to kind of pause and think about how I would have felt if I could show myself like five years ago what's going on now, you know? I really try to do it as often as I can because it's like at this point it feels like every day I get to do something that, um, you know, I could have only dreamt of a long time ago. So it feels good. Speaking of things you could have dreamt of, I understand you are a big fan of Taylor Swift and last summer you performed at the rose bowl with her. How did that come about and what was that like? So originally -- Look at you guys. The strut. Originally it was me just asking if I can get tickets to the show. Wow. Then she said yes, if I perform with her. So yeah, before I knew it, I was under the stage and did the whole popup thing. The popup thing is the best, right? Yeah, with the smoke, so good. So when you were 18 you came out publicly, correct? Yes. And also on YouTube. Yep. The interesting thing about coming out at that point was you were about to sign a record deal which could have possibly, you know, thwarted your career but you decided to do it. Why? Because of that exact reason actually. I at that point, thankfully, was sort of secure enough in myself and confident enough in myself that I knew that it was like a necessity for me to come out. I decided that I couldn't live without being completely truthful and open and honest. So I didn't want to ever give anyone that power to say no, don't come out right now because it will be bad for sales or whatever, I don't know. I just wanted to kind of completely take that in -- You took a risk. You took a risk and it worked. I'm so happy I did it. It paid off. It did. Let's talk about your new movie "Boy erased" which is such an incredible film. It's so nuanced. It's a true story, actually, based on the best selling book by Garrard Conley about his time at a gay converse camp. It has a great cast, you, Nicole kidman, Russell Crowe. You said you hope this movie speaks to parents in particular. What should it say to parents? So I think the thing that I learned while on this movie, while working on this movie, it kind of surprised me. I wasn't nearly as angry as I thought I was going to be at the parents who send their kids off to these programs. And I think the reason is because you see this family, it's a family story and they're just scared. They're really, really scared for their kid. Because they love him. They love him a lot and they want to do what they think is right so they turn to the people that they trust the most which is their faith and they think that they're doing the right thing. What I'm hoping is that this movie is going to kind of play out what happens when you send your kid to conversion therapy and you get to from the comfort of a movie theatre or your own home watch how that works out for so many people. Hopefully by the end of the movie you'll see that it is absolutely not the way to go about things, you know. Well, in fact, the leader of the conversion camp that the real Garrard -- is that how you say his name? He left in 2008 and is now married to a man. So that's ironic and interesting. Right. The other part of the movie that we just saw a clip of where you're saying to this other boy, just play dumb, make believe you're converting. Yeah, yeah. Is that a fact, does it happen like that? Yeah, I mean, I think honestly kids are lucky if they make it out alive, you know. It leads to depression and anxiety and suicide a lot of the time. It's still happening in 36 states across the U.S. That's what was fascinating to me because they explore that at the end of the movie, that it's still legal and it's still going on. Totally. I'm shocked by that, I got to tell you. I grew up in a really religious environment and community where this is still going on. Like it's emotional to even see this movie and to talk about it. You would think it was made in the '90s but this is still so real. I had friends who took their life because parents think they can change them. They think they can take the devil as they called it out of them and turn them into somebody else. I think what you're doing is so, so powerful and it's going to impact more lives than you realize. But you not only did this film, you were making an album at the same time called "Bloom." Did your perspective change when you finished filming and finished making that album? Completely, yeah. I mean, I kind of was almost done with the album and had to put it on pause to go film this movie. Really, really immersed myself in the movie for the time that we were filming and then when I was finished with it I was so just relieved. It felt like the biggest weight off my chest that I consider myself so unbelievably lucky that I get to go back to my big gay life and make this gay album. You know, it's like -- That's because you have parents who understood you. I think for lots of -- I think for lots of parents having a gay child is problematic for them because they don't want to say the wrong thing. They don't know how they're supposed to act because a lot of this is brand new for folks and then you get into gender diversity and people are kind of like so -- you know, parents have to understand, you know, we've all gone through this -- or maybe not everybody but I know a whole bunch of people have. You know someone who has gone through it. You know someone who has. It's also important to say this movie really holds people's hands through that process, you know what I mean? It's very patient. It doesn't point fingers at anyone, doesn't villainize anyone. I really think everyone should see it. I hope they will. And the great thing is that these parents actually love their kid. That's the bottom line. You have to come back. I want to, please. Any time. So, you need to see -- I'm sorry, my bad. Our thanks to troye Sivan. His movie, "Boy erased," is in theaters now and nationwide this Friday. Make sure to check out his critically acclaimed new album "Bloom."

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.