Billy Porter Reveals He Is Living With HIV In New Cover Story: “This Is What HIV-Positive Looks Like Now”
In a moving interview with The Hollywood Reporter, superstar Billy Porter bravely opens up about living with HIV for the past 14 years.
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While speaking with the outlet about his role as Pray Tell on the critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning series “Pose,” — which also depicts a man living with HIV, Porter reveals that he hid his diagnosis out of shame from friends, coworkers, as well as his mother but says he has a responsibility that now has him speaking out: “The truth is the healing.”
“I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,” he told The outlet, referring to his role as Pray Tell. He also clarified that the rest of the Pose team were unaware of his diagnosis. “For a long time, everybody who needed to know, knew — except for my mother,” he said. “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*ck up.” He told the outlet that he even had promised himself that he would wait until his mother passed to share his status to the world, but he decided to stop waiting.
“But look at me. Yes, I am the statistic, but I’ve transcended it. This is what HIV-positive looks like now. I’m going to die from something else before I die from that. My T-cell levels are twice yours because of this medication,” he said.
The 51-year-old actor went on to say, “I’m the healthiest I’ve been in my entire life,” Porter said. “So it’s time to let all that go and tell a different story. 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. And I’m sure this will follow me. I’m sure this is going to be the first thing everybody says, ‘HIV-positive blah, blah, blah.’ OK. Whatever. It’s not the only thing I am. I’m so much more than that diagnosis. And if you don’t want to work with me because of my status, you’re not worthy of me.”
Read Billy Porter’s full cover story here.
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