American actor, Billy Porter has on Wednesday, May 19 revealed he’s HIV-positive and was first diagnosed 14 years ago.
The Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Tony-winning performer discussed his diagnosis publicly for the first time in an interview published today in The Hollywood Reporter.
Porter, 51, stated;
This is what HIV-positive looks like now. I’m going to die from something else before I die from that. I’m the healthiest I’ve been in my entire life.
The actor made his name on Broadway, winning a Tony Award for his role in the musical Kinky Boots in 2013.
He won an Emmy in 2019 for playing Pray Tell, an MC on the 1980s New York ballroom scene, in Ryan Murphy’s acclaimed TV drama Pose. He earned Golden Globes nominations for best TV drama actor in both 2019 and 2020.
Porter said, as a gay Black man, the shame ignited by his religious upbringing and the fear of career repercussions had prevented him from speaking out earlier.
Until recently, he hadn’t even told his mother or his cast mates on the award-winning FX series “Pose,” where he plays an HIV-positive character, Pray Tell.
He explained;
HIV-positive, where I come from, growing up in the Pentecostal church with a very religious family, is God’s punishment.
Quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Porter said finally gave him the luxury to think, “created a safe space for me to stop and reflect and deal with the trauma in my life.”
His self-reflection led him to decide that it was “time to put my big boy pants on and talk.”
He told The Hollywood Reporter;
The truth is the healing. And I hope this frees me. I hope this frees me so that I can experience real, unadulterated joy, so that I can experience peace, so that I can experience intimacy, so that I can have sex without shame. This is for me. I’m doing this for me. I have too much s— to do, and I don’t have any fear about it anymore. I told my mother — that was the hurdle for me. I don’t care what anyone has to say. You’re either with me or simply move out of the way.
He and his sister made a plan to visit her to break the news, but he decided to do so over the phone on the last day of filming Pose, he said.
“Not two minutes into the conversation, she’s like, ‘What’s wrong?‘ I said, ‘Nothing.’ She’s like, ‘Son, please tell me what’s wrong.’
“So I ripped the Band-Aid off and I told her. 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.
He added;
And it’s all true. It’s my own shame. Years of trauma makes a human being skittish. But the truth shall set you free. I feel my heart releasing.
Modern treatments mean people can live long and healthy lives with HIV. “This is what HIV-positive looks like now,” Porter said.
He noted;
I’m going to die from something else before I die from that. My T-cell levels are twice yours because of this medication.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in 2015 that diagnoses of HIV in the U.S. declined by 19 percent in decade before, but “progress is uneven.”
Diagnoses among white gay and bisexual men decreased by 18 percent, but diagnoses among Black gay and bisexual men increased 22 percent from 2005 to 2014.
The increase leveled off in 2010, the CDC wrote, but Black gay and bisexual men still make up a disproportionate number of new diagnoses. In 2018, they made up 26 percent of the 37,968 new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. and dependent areas, according to the CDC.
