Billy Porter is living with HIV. He has been for 14 years. He’s been doing so while starring on Broadway, winning an Emmy for his performance as Pray Tell in the TV series Pose and while falling in love with his husband, Adam Smith.
The 51-year-old actor, singer, director and style icon is The Hollywood Reporter’s latest cover star, where he opened up about his HIV status. He’s finally coming out to change the perception of living with HIV. “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,” he says. “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.”
As part of his announcement, Porter posted his THR cover on Instagram. Shirtless and with enlarged necklaces draping down his body, Porter exudes confidence. “I want to begin by thanking you for all of the love and support you have shown me over the years. I have something very important that I am sharing with you all today. It is deeply personal and it is time,” he captioned the post.
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Porter hadn’t always felt he could be honest. He tells THR he received his diagnosis in 2007, which he calls “the worst year of my life.” Over the span of a few months, Porter says he declared bankruptcy and was diagnosed with both Type 2 diabetes and HIV.
He says shame kept him from coming out as living with HIV for over a decade. Shame that it might hurt his career. Shame that he’d become the statistic he feared. And shame that he found himself in a position to contract HIV happened at all. “As a Black person, particularly a Black man on this planet, you have to be perfect or you will get killed,” he says. “But look at me. Yes, I am the statistic, but I’ve transcended it.”
Porter credits his roles in award-winning roles in Kinky Boots on Broadway and Pose on FX with helping him process not only the trauma of his diagnosis but also, as he tells THR, surviving alleged sexual abuse by his stepfather as a child, coming out in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, and being sent to a psychologist when he was just 5 years old.
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Performing, Porter says, is where he works through his “shit.” “I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate. My compartmentalizing and disassociation muscles are very, very strong, so I had no idea I was being traumatized or triggered,” he says, reflecting on playing Pray Tell, a character who is also living with HIV.
Porter also recently appeared on the Tamron Hall Show, where he further explained that before he could come out publicly, there was one person he needed to tell in person: his mother. “She said, ‘Son, I love you. I will always love you. I have always loved you,” Porter recalls on the show. “None of this matters. I just want to know that you’re healthy.’”
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