When Troye Sivan and Gordon von Steiner began dreaming up the video for “She’s the Best,” the title track off Sivan’s upcoming album, they had one name on their wish list, and it was Nicole Kidman. Moulin Rouge! had both of them shook from a young age, so Kidman felt like the perfect expression of Sivan’s reverence towards the feminine, the theme this new record revolves around. Spoiler alert: they got her, and the resulting video, Sivan and von Steiner’s fourth together, is a sexy and celebratory ode to queens, divas, and icons. A few days before they dropped the video, Sivan, freshly relocated to New York, and von Steiner, mid-reset in Greece, caught up to talk about turning a wild casting idea into reality, developing their creative shorthand, and the best gay bars in town.
TUESDAY 12 PM AUGUST 11, 2026 NEW YORK CITY
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TROYE SIVAN: Hi.
GORDON VON STEINER: How are you doing?
SIVAN: Good. Are you still in Europe?
VON STEINER: I’m in Greece.
SIVAN: Fuck yeah. I love when you send me voice notes and it says the location even down to the hotel.
VON STEINER: I noticed that. It’s so funny.
SIVAN: So when are you back? I’m here waiting.
VON STEINER: No return ticket. I’ll be back in 10 days. I’m getting my little reset. I’m sad I’m missing you at the premiere.
SIVAN: Yeah, I know. That sucks. I feel so excited about this coming out.
VON STEINER: Me too.
SIVAN: So I just got here [New York] and I’m here for the next few months. It’s my first time living here. When did you come to New York and what’s your relationship with it?
VON STEINER: I came when I was 17. It was the week after I graduated high school. I went to NYU. I spent the summer there before I started school by myself and I grew up very quickly from growing up in Canada and then spending the summer in New York. I was like, “Oh, this is a different beast that I’m not used to,” and sort of terrifying and lonely the first few months until I started school. I was so desperate to make friends and have any sort of connection, by the time that school started, I threw myself into it and then fell in love with the city and basically couldn’t look back.
SIVAN: How did you meet people in the beginning?
VON STEINER: I met no one. I literally was on my own. I was sneaking into gay bars, basically. I was still kind of straight my first year at school, but I was like, “Nobody knows me. I can be anybody I want.” So my first gay bar was Heaven in Chelsea, and I wore the dumbest outfit. It opened at 10:00 and I was there at like 10:03. I was having the time of my life, but also unsure of how to fully step into the world yet.
SIVAN: So then you went to college here studying film? When did [Steven] Meisel come into the picture?
VON STEINER: Meisel came into the picture a couple years after I graduated. I was interning at GQ Magazine doing all their video content at the time.
SIVAN: Got it.
VON STEINER: Back when videos were still not really a thing for magazines. And then I got put in touch with someone from Art + Commerce who introduced me to the Meisel world and my idea of fashion and video shifted. It was like a grad school of sorts and those were the formative years, when I finished NYU and was like, “Oh, this is a masterclass in taste.” The amount of time that was spent on the hair, the makeup, and the fashion, I was not used to that. Even from the GQ world, it was more celebrity-focused. And the Steven world was like taking the time to make sure that you’re doing something beautiful, but also something different.
SIVAN: That’s something I’ve learned from you is to really take the time in the pre-production, even down to hair and makeup and stuff to get it right. I remember once we filmed a music video for “Youth” and we were filming in this big open warehouse and it was supposed to look like a [James] Turrell art piece. And people were supposed to be dancing behind me in slow motion and I remember the people that were in the video didn’t feel comfortable dancing. So they all just jumped up and down, hopped on the spot. I remember thinking, “This definitely feels very weird” while we’re filming it. But at that time I still thought, “Maybe it’ll look cool in post. And I now know that if something’s not feeling right, fix it now because we ended up scrapping the video. This was so early in my career that I had such guilt because I didn’t want anyone to think I was a diva. But now I think about how much we go in before we even step on set, you and I know—
VON STEINER: The concept we have and everything. That’s what I love about you, because I’ve heard this album so far in advance, had so much time to think about it, and it’s not, “We’re shooting a video in three weeks.” It’s, “In seven months from now, we’re going to do the first single.” That, by nature, makes the video bigger and bigger. You take the video as seriously as you take the songwriting.
SIVAN: Visually, once I started working with you, it was like self-actualization, fully realized. I’m in my final form with our videos. It’s like, “I don’t think it’s going to get better than this for the rest of my life.”
VON STEINER: I appreciate that.
SIVAN: And you’d never done a music video before “Rush”?
VON STEINER: No, that was my first.
SIVAN: You got nominated for a Grammy. Slay.
VON STEINER: Thank you.
SIVAN: I hope that the article says, “Grammy-nominated Gordon von Steiner.” Music is such a big part of all your work, but did you want to do a music video before and why didn’t you?
VON STEINER: I’d always wanted to do a video before and I’m also obsessed with music, as you know. To me, the sound makes or breaks a video. I knew that creatively it would be a jump for me to do a music video. So whatever the first one I did would have to say something. When you approached me with the last album, you played “Rush,” “Got Me Started,” “One of Your Girls,” and I could see it instantly. I was like, “This is also so exciting for me to be able to do something different, to break out of the fashion world for a moment.” And also, to try something with you and say something about myself, too. As a queer artist, I had never done anything gay before and I needed to make something like that, which now I feel like that roof has been blown off. But at the time, I hadn’t done that yet.
SIVAN: I don’t remember when we met because in my head we knew each other from being gay before we met in any sort of work context.
VON STEINER: I can’t remember either. Now it feels like a bit of a blur, but I know we had tried to do a music video before and the timing hadn’t worked out. And in the end, doing the last album felt like everything locked into place. Talk to me about “She’s the Best.” You knew this was going to be the first single since the moment you played me the album. Why did this one resonate so much with you?
SIVAN: It was one of the ones where I was in the studio and simultaneously as I was writing the lyrics, I was also moodboarding the video, which is always a good sign for me. When something is immediately cinematic in my head, I find it so inspiring. It’s a very important song to me. I spent so much time psychoanalyzing myself and then also writing about love and sex and men. I’ve never expressed this other huge part of my life and huge feeling that I have that’s awe and appreciation for the women in my life. And so the second it started coming, I had one of our reference images that we ended up using open on my laptop. It’s that one of that beautiful person blow-drying their hair with that comb, right?
VON STEINER: Mm-hmm.
SIVAN: Something about it made me want to cry. It brings up so much of my own femininity that I fought for so long. I have a love for my inner child when I see something like that. And then it got me thinking about my sister and the trans women in my life down to my English teacher and my icons growing up, if it was Nicole Kidman or Janet Jackson. They’re in my DNA, and the only constant that I’ve had in my life is an iconic woman. Also, sonically, it’s an interesting world that I haven’t really explored. Coming off of how bombastic the last album was, I was really intrigued and creatively satisfied by the idea of showing a different side of myself and of the project.
VON STEINER: I totally understand that. When you first played me the song, even the first 15 seconds, I was like, “Oh, this feels like a sound I haven’t heard from you before.” Even the spoken word at the beginning and the beat, it’s such an interesting representation of this new sound. And then the idea of the song we’ve discussed before of the feminine figures in our lives, they represent such an important part stemming anywhere from the movie star to a family member to the woman you see on the street. It’s finding the icon in both the everyday and the most glamorous person that exists. Do you remember the first girl you were obsessed with?
SIVAN: Probably my sister. She’s two years younger than me, and I remember thinking she was so pretty and cool. We still have such a special relationship. She’s in the music video. Your mom’s in the music video.
VON STEINER: That felt very special. Shooting the two of them was two of my favorite moments.
SIVAN: I’m not just saying this, but the cultural moment that I remember being really shook by was Moulin Rouge and Nicole. I remember being young enough that I was scared of the first 10 minutes of the movie because Moulin Rouge is very chaotic in the first 10 minutes. But then I was in. It was probably one of the first times that I’d been gagged in my life. Do I remember you saying that you had a poster of her?
VON STEINER: Yes. Well, that was the film that really changed my mind about wanting to become a filmmaker. I was 12 or 13. As a young gay kid, Moulin Rouge coming out, it was this realization of, “Oh, this is something I haven’t seen before. This is an option as a career to make something like this?” And then it was the first time I was introduced to Nicole as well, and I couldn’t tell if I was in love with her or wanted to be her or be around her. I remember all these boys being like, “Oh, my favorite is Jessica Alba.” I was like, “It’s Nicole Kidman for me.” There’s something in her, the fierceness, the fearlessness, the beauty. She can go gorgeous, she can go strange. She had that fearlessness in her that resonates with us and many people in a real, true way.
SIVAN: Totally. And then, she couldn’t have been more amazing to work with on the day. I don’t know if it’s a chicken or the egg thing where because she’s so famous this happens, but I have a theory that this has been her whole life. When she walked into the bar set, it was like the air got sucked out of the room. It’s like divine feminine energy personified.
VON STEINER: Truly. And I get the sense that she just wants everything to be the best it can be. We are in no rush to get through takes. She is focused, wants to know who the character is. What’s the story we’re telling? What’s the world we’re building? How far away are we from that world when you transform as well? I felt she was very invested in it, which also, as a director, really is the most inspiring thing you can have.
SIVAN: When did the idea get brought up of Nicole? We were sitting at my house, right?
VON STEINER: Sitting at your house, and you said, “I have a crazy idea of someone.” I was like, “Well, this is the most genius thing you’ve ever thought of.” It didn’t even come to me. It’s a fantasy of who could be in it and you did it.
SIVAN: Every time my phone went off from her confirming until shoot day, anytime she texted me or called me, I was like, “Well, obviously this is going to be her saying that she can’t do it because understandably she’s Nicole Kidman.” And it never happened. I accepted that it was happening when we wrapped her out. I was like, “Okay, I think it’s going to make the video. I think she’s in it.” You know?
VON STEINER: No, same. There’s always this pressure of it’s the new era, your first single, and it was like, “Okay, we have one more element that really we have to step it up and make something fantastic here because we have Nicole.” What do you think feels different about this era?
SIVAN: I feel way more confident. My barometer for success is really quite selfish where it’s like, “Am I proud of it? Do I think that we’re saying something that we haven’t said before?” And I totally feel that way. I can’t sleep at night if I don’t feel like I can totally stand behind the work. So then it becomes fun to play, like, “What if this one is maybe a little bit more experimental? And then what if after that, something completely different comes?” Playing with that cadence is really fun. It’s a feeling that is kind of indescribable.
VON STEINER: Mm-hmm.
SIVAN: These creative relationships are one of the things that I’m most grateful for in my life. Finding Leland, for example, my best friend, and we’ve been writing together for 10 years, he’s on every song on the album. Maybe this is how you feel about Meisel, but these people genuinely change and shape you and you define yourself almost by osmosis, through collaboration.
VON STEINER: Those people in your life push you. When you think about, “Okay, who’s this video for? Who do I want to make proud?”, it’s usually the closest collaborators. Are they going to be feeling like we brought this to the next level? Am I going to be able to impress you with what I’ve done with the new video? And as an artist, I try to push you out of your comfort zone a little bit.
SIVAN: Yep.
VON STEINER: And with myself as a filmmaker, I’m like, “Okay, what can we do that’s also going to be challenging for me?” That’s sometimes where the magic happens, when we’re both a little bit nervous.
SIVAN: Definitely.
VON STEINER: Going through “She’s the Best,” it was a production of gargantuan scale. And I do a lot of big productions, but on a two-day shoot in New York, multi-camera, I don’t know how many locations, how many cast members, but you strive for something. When that nervousness happens, that’s when things hopefully click into place.
SIVAN: Totally. We got gifted these amazing characters that just totally embody the song. The best way to listen to the song is to put in headphones and walk around a city. Because once you tune into it, they’re absolutely everywhere.
VON STEINER: Listening to the song leading up, you’d see these women and feminine characters on the street being like, “Oh my god, look at her. She’s the best.” Sasha Colby pumped it down the street in Chinatown at sunset, it was the last shot. We did the whole film. It felt very wow.
SIVAN: Sasha, what a weapon. Remember when her hairpiece came out? There’s obviously feathers and stuff like that on the floor because we’ve been having the most insane time. Her hairpiece comes out and she starts sweeping the floor with her hair.
VON STEINER: I was going to call cut. All of a sudden she starts sweeping the floor. I was like, “Oh, no, she’s rolling with it. She’s going for it.”
SIVAN: She’s a pro. So my last question for you, where should I go to meet the hottest men in New York while I’m here? I want cool, chill guys. I don’t care what industry.
VON STEINER: That is a great question, Troye. I’m a huge believer in the old gay bars of the West Village. To do Julius’ Monster—you could have a gay West Village night and the characters you meet along the way, that never gets old. I love that old Christopher Street bar hop. That’s a guaranteed hilarious night out.
SIVAN: I’ve been to the oldest one. I can’t remember the name.
VON STEINER: Julius.
SIVAN: Is that Julius? I’ve only ever been during the day, so maybe I’ll go this weekend to celebrate.
VON STEINER: Okay. There’s a jukebox there. You can put in $20 and play two hours of songs if you so please.
SIVAN: I’ve wanted to go to Basement for a while.
VON STEINER: I’m taking you to Basement.
SIVAN: Okay. Thank you so much, Gordy. I’ll see you soon.
