Billy Porter Lashes Out at Disney CEO Bob Iger, Says He’s Been Forced to Sell His House Amidst Strikes: “F**k You”

Just four years ago, Billy Porter made history at the Emmys after being the first openly gay man to win the best actor in a drama award for his role in FX’s Pose. But now, he’s facing a starkly different reality as he says he has to sell his house due to the uncertainty of future projects amid the ongoing Hollywood strikes.

Porter opened up about his struggles in a recent interview with U.K. outlet The Evening Standard. While he was promoting his music career, the topic of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes came up in the conversation.

“I have to sell my house,” he revealed. “Because we’re on strike. And I don’t know when we’re gonna go back. The life of an artist, until you make fuck-you money — which I haven’t made yet — is still check-to-check.”

Porter continued, “I was supposed to be in a new movie and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening. So to the person who said, ‘We’re going to starve them out until they have to sell their apartments’ — you’ve already starved me out.”

The actor was referring to the Deadline report in which an unnamed studio executive said they planned to let the strikes “drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”

The WGA has been on strike since early May, while SAG-AFTRA joined the picket lines last month after negotiations with major studios failed. Since then, both unions have ceased working on and promoting new projects — and many productions have been temporarily shut down as they fight for residuals from streaming companies.

“In the late ’50s, early ’60s, when they structured a way for artists to be compensated properly through residual [payments], it allowed for the 2% of working actors — and there are 150,000 people in our union — who work consistently,” Porter explained.

However, when streaming came in, he said there’s “no contract for it” and streaming platforms like Netflix and Max “don’t have to be transparent with the numbers.”

“The streaming companies are notoriously opaque with their viewership figures,” he said. “The business has evolved. So the contract has to evolve and change, period.”

Porter went on to deliver a blunt message to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who previously called the strikes “very disturbing” and “disruptive.”

“To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 a day?” Porter added. “I don’t have any words for it, but: fuck you. That’s not useful, so I’ve kept my mouth shut. I haven’t engaged because I’m so enraged… When I go back I will join the picket lines.”