“Pose” star Billy Porter said that he has been HIV-positive for 14 years and is feeling fine.
In a first-person article published Wednesday by The Hollywood Reporter, Porter, an Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Tony-winning performer, spoke about his diagnosis for the first time.
“This is what HIV-positive looks like now,” Porter told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m going to die from something else before I die from that. My T-cell levels are twice yours because of this medication. I go to the doctor now -- as a Black, 51-year-old man, I go to the doctor every three months. That doesn’t happen in my community. We don’t trust doctors.
“But I go to the doctor, and I know what’s going on in my body. I’m the healthiest I’ve been in my entire life. So it’s time to let all that go and tell a different story. There’s no more stigma -- let’s be done with that. It’s time. I’ve been living it and being in the shame of it for long enough.”
For the first time since being diagnosed 14 years ago, @TheeBillyPorter opens up about the shame that compelled him to hide his diagnosis from his castmates, collaborators and mother, and the responsibility and gratitude that now empowers him to speak out https://t.co/MrfzphPtrI
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 19, 2021
Porter said playing Pray Tell, the HIV-positive character on “Pose,” gave him crucial opportunities, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Porter said the shame that was carried over from his religious upbringing and a fear of damaging his career by revealing his condition sooner prevented him from speaking out earlier, the newspaper reported. Porter had not even told his mother or fellow actors on “Pose” about his condition, according to the Times.
“I was the generation that was supposed to know better, and it happened anyway. It was 2007, the worst year of my life,” Porter wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. “I was on the precipice of obscurity for about a decade or so, but 2007 was the worst of it. By February, I had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. By March, I signed bankruptcy papers. And by June, I was diagnosed HIV-positive.
“The shame of that time compounded with the shame that had already (accumulated) in my life silenced me, and I have lived with that shame in silence for 14 years. HIV-positive, where I come from, growing up in the Pentecostal church with a very religious family, is God’s punishment.”
DaShawn Usher, GLAAD’s associated director for communities of color, applauded Porter’s revelations in a statement.
“The tremendous levels of stigma facing people living with HIV today can only be broken by icons like Billy Porter showing the world that HIV is not at all a barrier to a healthy and successful life,” Usher said. “When the groundbreaking show ‘Pose’ goes off (the) air in a few weeks, there will be zero television characters living with HIV. That is truly unacceptable when 1.2 million Americans and about 38 million people globally are living with HIV. Billy’s powerful interview needs to be a wake-up call for media and the general public that it’s time to end the stigma that people living with HIV face and to educate each other about HIV prevention and treatment.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in 2015 that diagnoses of HIV in the U.S. declined by 19% over the previous decade, NBC News reported, but added that “progress is uneven.”
My truth. In my time. Thank you @THR. https://t.co/QWLe8jfdrc
— Billy Porter (@theebillyporter) May 19, 2021
Diagnoses among white gay and bisexual men decreased by 18% over that period, but diagnoses among Black gay and bisexual men increased 22% from 2005 to 2014, the CDC said.
Porter, a Pittsburgh native, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a bachelor’s in drama and won $100,000 as a contestant on “Star Search,” the Times reported. He had several successes on Broadway and released two of his four albums before beginning the role that brought him fame: Lola in the 2013 Broadway musical version of “Kinky Boots.”
Porter won a Tony Award for leading actor in a musical and the Grammy for best musical theater album. In 2019, he won an Emmy for his lead performance in “Pose.”
“I survived so that I could tell the story. That’s what I’m here for,” Porter wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
Cox Media Group
