Billy Porter Reveals His HIV Status
Billy Porter is finally opening up about his HIV status after 14 years of silence.
He said he got diagnosed in 2007 and was fearful of discrimination in the Hollywood industry. Billy also stated that he had kept his mom in the dark as well.
Porter states, “For a long time, everybody who needed to know, knew — except for my mother. 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. But quarantine has taught me a lot. Everybody was required to sit down and shut the f**k up.
Billy also said that his ‘Pose’ character was his vessel to express his true feelings upon learning about his HIV status.
He continued, “There has never been a moment that I’ve not been in trauma, which is what I’ve discovered this last year. And it was my engine for a very long time. My trauma served me, my story has served me, in terms of forward motion. And as an artist, I’m grateful to have been given opportunities to work through my sh*t”
