No more shame: Billy Porter breaks silence on HIV status

The 51-year-old Porter, who won an Emmy for his HIV-positive character Pray Tell on the FX series, said the isolation of the pandemic led him to reflect on his secret, kept from his mother and those involved with his ballroom drama set in New York at the height of the AIDS crisis in the ’80s.

Telling his mother was the most difficult. Having grown up in the Pentecostal church, in an intensely religious family, the stage and screen star said the shame of being queer was compounded by his HIV status.

“She said, ‘You’ve been carrying this around for 14 years? 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 recalled.

He said today, he’s the “healthiest I’ve ever been.”

Porter called 2007, the year he was diagnosed, the worst year of his life. In addition to his HIV status, he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes that year, and he signed bankruptcy papers.

“I survived so that I could tell the story. That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “I’m the vessel, and emotionally that was sufficient — until it wasn’t. Until I got married (in 2017). Now I’m trying to have a family; now it’s not just me. It’s time to grow up and move on because shame is destructive — and if not dealt with, it can destroy everything in its path.”

The series is in its third season, the final round for Porter’s show. He’s writing a memoir, working on a Netflix documentary about his life and will play a genderless Fairy Godmother this year in a new film take on Cinderella, scheduled for release in September on Amazon Prime.

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