TV Talk: Pittsburgh native, ‘Pose’ star Billy Porter reveals he's HIV-positive

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Pittsburgh native Billy Porter revealed he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2007.

It’s one reason why his HIV-positive character, Pray Tell, on FX’s “Pose” meant so much to him.

“I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,” Porter told THR.

The THR article also revealed Porter is currently filming a docu-series for Netflix, which captured the THR interview, and he’s writing an autobiography that’s due out later this year.

My truth. In my time. Thank you @THR. https://t.co/QWLe8jfdrc

— Billy Porter (@theebillyporter) May 19, 2021

“Having lived through the plague, my question was always, ‘Why was I spared? Why am I living?” Porter told THR. “Well, I’m living so that I can tell the story. There’s a whole generation that was here and I stand on their shoulders. I can be who I am in this space, at this time, because of the legacy that they left for me.”

Porter said 2007 was the worst year of his life, first with a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes and then the HIV-positive diagnosis. He said he thought his HIV-positive diagnosis (“I have lived with that shame in silence for 14 years”) was God’s punishment having grown up in a Pentecostal church with a religious family.

“My mother had been through so much already, so much persecution by her religious community because of my queerness, that I just didn’t want her to have to live through their ‘I told you so’s,’” Porter told THR. “I didn’t want to put her through that.”

Porter said he kept his diagnosis from his mother but therapy for past trauma over the past year – Porter said he was sexually abused by his stepfather from age 7 to 12 – made him rethink that.

When Porter called his mother on his last day filming “Pose,” she could tell he was holding something back. Porter told her.

“You’ve been carrying this around for 14 years?” she said. “Don’t ever do this again. I’m your mother, I love you no matter what. And I know I didn’t understand how to do that early on, but it’s been decades now.”

Porter’s experience is reflected in what his “Pose” character has gone through, particularly in a recent episode when Pray Tell went home to Allentown, Pa., and revealed his HIV-positive status to family members and revisited the church family he grew up in.

“It’s completely based on my own experience,” Porter told me in April, saying it was important to him to call out the Black church for what he sees as its hypocrisy. “You can’t be an oppressed community and demand your human rights and then turn around and oppress another group of disenfranchised people because you don’t like how they live. … You can’t be marching for BLM and then be beating up a trans girl at the 7-11 because she’s trans! Stop it! Everybody stop it!”

Porter said he “really cracked open the consciousness” of his family when it comes to gay rights.

(SPOILER ALERT: The clip below contains a spoiler for the series finale of “Pose,” airing June 6.)

“Before it’s in your family or in your consciousness, you don’t have to deal with it,” Porter said. “You can stand outside of it and judge it. So when it’s inside of your family, when it’s somebody you know, then you have to like, go, ‘OK, wait a minute,’ and restructure your thinking. That’s why we have to be vocal. That’s why we have to be visible. That’s why we have to say it out loud, in front of everybody in front of the world, because then it cant be hidden anymore. Stop hiding, come out of the shadows, and let the world know who we are. Period.”

Porter said he hopes others will follow his lead.

“The only way things change is when we when we show up,” he said. “I’m not asking for understanding or acceptance or tolerance. Your respect for my humanity is required to be in my space. If you can’t do that, move out of the way. That’s all, just move out of the way.”