Billy Porter Spills on His Steamy, Revolutionary ‘Pose’ Sex Scene

Last night (August 6) Billy Porter became a sex symbol, and it’s about damn time. At a panel for Pose at the Television Critics Association’s 2019 summer tour the actor and fashion icon broke down his big, steamy sex scene from the episode, and explained why it was so revolutionary. Spoilers ahead for Pose Season 2, Episode 8.

Pose has never been a stranger to hot sex, from Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain) and Ricky’s (Dyllón Burnside) relationship to Elektra’s (Dominique Jackson) job as a dominatrix. But in “Revelations” Billy Porter’s Pray Tell finally got his due. Written and directed by showrunner Steven Canals, the episode chronicles Pray Tell giving into the advances of the much younger Ricky and examines how this hookup changes the family’s dynamic forever.

“Listen here. I got that contract, and that contract said ‘Nudity Clause.’ And I literally sat and went, ‘Child, they don’t want to see my black ass,” Porter joked during the Pose panel. “I signed it, never thinking in a million years that anybody would call me on it. And these bitches wrote a script where I have to show my ass.”

But for Porter, the scene was much more than just a steamy good time. “I have been in this business, like I said and everybody knows, for 30 years. I have been out from the beginning. And in the past, as an out, queer actor, they generally tend to cut our dicks off. We are not sexualized people, especially and even when they started having started telling stories of love, they were always white boys,” Porter said. “I have spent my entire career never having been the object of anyone’s affection in anything until now. I had my first kiss, my first romantic kiss in anything ever in my life last season in Episode 8. So to be turning 50 on September 21st and having a very loving, connected sex scene is sort of blowing my mind.”

After the panel actress Mj Rodriguez teased a group of reporters about what may be in store for house mother Blanca’s love life. Though Blanca doesn’t have an established romantic interest in “Revelations” the episode includes a scene where Pray Tell calls Blanca out for desexualizing herself in the wake of her positive HIV status.

“I think it’s needed just as Pray Tell has had a moment to be seen. I think it’s also important for the world to see a young, aspiring, African-American, Latina, woman of color have a love interest or have some type of introduction to love. Because one, it would be revolutionary. And two it would open up the minds of a lot of men out there who have interest in us but who also are with us and who have lived the story and know us as human beings first,” Rodriguez said. “So yeah, I think you might get that.”

New episodes of Pose premiere on FX Tuesdays at 10/9c.

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