Billy Porter Reveals He Is HIV-Positive
After 14 years of concealing his diagnosis, 51-year-old actor Billy Porter opened up about being HIV-positive in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. Porter explained how expressing the truth is the next step in his journey and the progress society has made towards eliminating the stigma.
In 2007, Porter was diagnosed with HIV, and since kept it a secret out of fear of being judged and sabotaging his career. In the same year, Porter was diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes and filed for bankruptcy, leading him to name 2007 as the worst year of his life. Porter recalled the anxiety surrounding the reactions of those in his religious community. Growing up in the Pentecostal Church, Porter described how he was afraid to tell his mother because he did not want those in her community to spew hate in light of Porter’s diagnosis. “I was trying to have a life and a career, and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew. It would just be another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession. So I tried to think about it as little as I could. I tried to block it out,” stated Porter.
Determined to succeed despite the obstacles, Porter continued to focus on his career. He went on to receive an Emmy for his role as Pray Tell on Pose. Tell shares many things in common with Porter, including the HIV diagnosis. “I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,” he reveals, clarifying that no one from the show was aware of his personal struggle with being HIV-positive. In addition to his Emmy, Porter is also a Golden Globe and Tony Award winner, as well as a fashion icon.
It was not until quarantine that Porter decided to face what he had been avoiding. The months of solitude and silence created the opportunity for Porter to try to work through the trauma. “COVID created a safe space for me to stop and reflect and deal with the trauma in my life. Now, I’ve been in therapy for a long time. I started when I was 25, and I’ve been going on and off for years. But in the last year, I started real trauma therapy to begin the process of healing. I started peeling back all these layers: having been sent to a psychologist at age 5 because I came out of the womb a big old queen; being sexually abused by my stepfather from the time I was 7 to the time I was 12; coming out at 16 in the middle of the AIDS crisis.”
This makes Billy Porter’s performance on #PoseFX hit even harder now knowing that he used Pray Tell as his proxy 🥺❤️ https://t.co/9Xr7xzm30F
— Chulumanco Mahamba (@Chulu_M) May 19, 2021
Still, with all of the hardships, Porter explains that the trauma he endured all his life is channeled through his artistic outlet. From his role on Broadway in Kinky Boots to Rise (the documentary about his life that is currently being made in collaboration with Ryan Murphy), Porter has continued to gain recognition despite the many challenges.
“There’s happiness, yes; there’s surface joy, but there was also a feeling of dread, all day, every day. It wasn’t a fear that [my status] was going to come out or that somebody was going to expose me; it was just the shame that it had happened in the first place. And as a Black person, particularly a Black man on this planet, you have to be perfect or you will get killed. But look at me. Yes, I am the statistic, but I’ve transcended it. This is what HIV-positive looks like now.”
“The truth is the healing. And I hope this frees me. I hope this frees me so that I can experience real, unadulterated joy, so that I can experience peace, so that I can experience intimacy, so that I can have sex without shame. This is for me. I’m doing this for me. I have too much shit to do, and I don’t have any fear about it anymore. I told my mother — that was the hurdle for me. I don’t care what anyone has to say. You’re either with me or simply move out of the way.”
Porter’s documentary, Rise, is set to premiere later this year. He will also be playing a modern version of the Fairy Godmother in the upcoming Cinderella starring Camila Cabello. Find Billy Porter on the third and final season of Pose on FX.
