Entertainment
Billy Porter Reveals He’s Had HIV For 14 Years
Pose Star Billy Porter Says He’s Been Living With HIV, Shame Kept Him From Telling
Pose star Billy Porter has opened up about the shame that caused him to hide his condition from his castmates, mother and collaborators. According to Billy, he’s been living with HIV for the last 14-years.
In a cover story with The Hollywood Reporter, he stated “I have to start in 2007,” In June of that year I was diagnosed HIV-positive.”
Ironically, his HIV-positive character on the FX series, Praytell, served as an outlet for the “Pose” Star. “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.
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“Having lived through the plague, my question was always, “Why was I spared? Why am I living?” 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,” he concluded.
Billy Porter (born September 21, 1969) is an actor, singer and style icon. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, and achieved fame performing on Broadway before starting a solo career as a singer and actor.
In 2014 Porter won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Kinky Boots. As of 2020 he stars in the television series Pose for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first openly gay black man to be nominated and win in any lead acting category at the Primetime Emmys.
Porter is included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
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