Billy Porter: ‘This Is What HIV Looks Like’—WATCH
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The first openly gay man to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, Billy Porter, just shared some big news.
During an exclusive sit-down with Tamron Hall, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor pulled back the curtain on his 14-year HIV battle and the shocking 2007 diagnosis. Porter also got candid about the parallels to his POSE character, Pray Tell, and how the role inspired him to come forward with his secret.
And he spills about finally telling his mom after more than a decade, during the conversation Hall. “This,” The Hollywood Reporter, quoted Porter, “is what HIV-positive looks like now”
The Hollywood Reporter: For the first time since being diagnosed more than a decade ago, the ‘Pose’ star opens up about the shame that compelled him to hide his condition from his castmates, collaborators and even his mother, and the responsibility that now has him speaking out: “The truth is the healing.”
Porter told THR: “In June of that year,” he continues, a ball of nerves, even if the performer in him refuses to let on, “I was diagnosed HIV-positive.”
In the 14 years since, the Emmy-winning star of Pose has told next to no one, fearing marginalization and retaliation in an industry that hasn’t always been kind to him. Instead, the 51-year-old, who has cultivated a fervent fan base in recent years on the basis of his talent and authenticity, says he’s been using Pray Tell, his HIV-positive character on the FX series, as his proxy. “I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,” he reveals, acknowledging that nobody involved with the show had any idea he was drawing from his own life.
Porter also wrote about the subject in a series of three Instagram posts, beginning: “I want to begin by thanking you for all of the love and support you have shown me over the years. I have something very important that I am sharing with you all today. It is deeply personal and it is time. There’s a link in my bio to a story that The @hollywoodreporter posted this morning. There’s also a swipe-up link in my IG story above. Please go and read it. #TheTruthIsTheHealing And then please join me at 10AM EST this morning as I talk it all through with my sister @TamronHall on the @TamronHallShow. Thank you. #grateful.”
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Porte continued in the second post: Having lived through the plague, my question was always, “Why was I spared? Why am I living?”
I was the generation that was supposed to know better, and it happened anyway.
Well, I’m living so that I can tell the story. There’s a whole generation that was here, and I stand on their shoulders. I can be who I am in this space, at this time, because of the legacy that they left for me. So it’s time to put my big boy pants on and talk.
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Porter finished, “There has never been a moment that I’ve not been in trauma, which is what I’ve discovered this last year. And it was my engine for a very long time. My trauma served me, my story has served me, in terms of forward motion. And as an artist, I’m grateful to have been given opportunities to work through my shit.”
I survived so that I could tell the story. That’s what I’m here for. I’m the vessel, and emotionally that was sufficient — until it wasn’t. Until I got married [in 2017]. Now I’m trying to have a family; now it’s not just me. It’s time to grow up and move on because shame is destructive — and if not dealt with, it can destroy everything in its path.
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