Exclusive Interview: Troye Sivan, Brianne Tju, and Viveik Kalra Discuss Their New Film Three Months

Troye Sivan, Brianne Tju, and Viveik Kalra are the stars of the must-see new film Three Months.

The coming-of-age dramedy tells the story of Caleb, a South Flordia teen who loves his camera, his weed, and his grandmother. On the eve of his high school graduation, everything changes when he’s exposed to HIV. While he waits three months for his results, Caleb finds love in the most unlikely of places.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with the cast about creating the bond that we see on screen, what attracted them to the project, inclusive storytelling, and how they created the space for themselves to dive into each of their characters.

PC: Troye, I wanted to start with you. Caleb embarks on this journey of self-discovery after being exposed to HIV. How did you create this space for yourself to explore the wide range of emotions that Caleb undergoes throughout the film and his process of removing the stigma around HIV?
Troye: I was very lucky in that the writer and director of this movie, Jared Frieder, loosely based this story on his own experience. I had this resource right in front of me. Our closest collaborator was someone that I could turn to at any moment. He would give me such amazing guidance. I was also really able to pull a lot from my own life with a lot of what Caleb goes through as a gay Jewish teen. This experience is deeply personal to him, and you have that war inside your mind before you share it with someone else. That’s always such an important step in working through something like this.

For me, it was about time traveling back to when I was seventeen and remembering how every single thing felt like the end of the world. Then on top of it, he’s actually going through something that’s very, very serious and intense. The thing that made me fall in love with the movie is that the message is, “He’s going to be okay no matter what.” To see him go on that journey really touched me.

PC: Brianne, you’ve grown up in this industry and you’ve seen the slow progress towards more inclusive storytelling, which has been reflected in the projects and characters that you’ve played. What was it about Three Months and Dara in particular that drew you to this role?
Brianne: Immediately upon reading the script, I wanted to do this. I felt so drawn to it immediately and not just to Dara, but also Viveik’s character and Troye’s character. I saw myself and a lot of Asian Americans through these characters—the generational traumas and pressures that we carry and the ability to accept ourselves and all of our individual qualities. Being able to work as an Asian American in this industry is incredible. We’re headed in a great direction. To play this specific character that is so nuanced and isn’t your typical best friend character is important to me and for the community.

PC: Viveik, one of the central relationships in your character’s life is with his parents. We don’t see this interaction often on screen, which makes his need for parental approval all that much more relatable. How did you create that backstory for yourself?
Viveik: It’s interesting because you don’t see that relationship on screen really. You don’t see his parents. I thought about that and the fact that there is not really a dialogue there. The dialogue that Estha has is a mental dialogue with himself, which is unhealthy to a certain degree, especially when you’re going through something like he is. I think the relationship with Troye’s character Caleb is incredibly beneficial to him because he can talk to someone who’s going through the same thing. He’s also appreciative of Dara, who Brianne plays, but there’s not that same connection. He can’t understand why Dara is roasting him with her eyes every time she looks at him even though he is nice and friendly.

PC: There’s such great chemistry that comes off the screen between all of you. How did you build that bond during a pandemic?
Brianne: It was because of the pandemic.

Troye: [laughs] I was going to say that too. I don’t know if you remember who you were with when the world fell apart, but we were together. We had already started this journey. We were maybe a week and a half, two weeks into filming. We were just starting to find our footing. Every day things were changing hour by hour. We were like, “Okay, we’ll just hang out in Atlanta and wait two weeks till this whole thing blows over.” It didn’t. Then we had a six-month period where we didn’t do anything. We all went to our separate places. We were all keeping in touch about when we were going to come back and if we were going to come back.

I feel like we have been through something together. This movie already felt so intimate as far as the people that were making it. We’re all really, really close and we all really care about it. It’s been a hell of a journey. If anything, that brought us closer. I think the friendship and the chemistry that you see on screen is real. We didn’t have to try too hard.

Viveik: It was also super nice coming back to finish this after the world semi-melted. After we came back, it was really nice for me personally. I think a benefit of being an actor is that you get to work with people that are very, very different from you. Troye and Brianne are very different people from me. That was really refreshing to be around. They made me slightly less uptight for the moments that we were together. That was really lovely.

Make sure to follow Troye (Twitter/Instagram) and Brianne (Instagram). Watch Three Months on Paramount+ today.