Photo: Shavonne Wong
Billy Porterhas survived a lot. But, also, the man has lived.
“At 52 years old, I am getting to the deepest parts of my truth,” Porter tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s issue. “I’m having a rebirth — on my own terms.”
Just as Porter has always said what he wanted to say — most recently in his new memoir,Unprotected —other folks have always said a lot about him. Growing up, he was too girly. At Carnegie Mellon, where he studied theater on a scholarship, he was told his voice “was too high for the American stage.” Then on Broadway, “They said don’t sing ‘so R&B.’ I was too Black, too ethnic, too gay, too much,” he says. He still gets that on Twitter:Billy Porter is too much!He doesn’t take the bait.
“I am not adjudicating my life on social media,” he says. “Nobody can do what I can do. That is not ego. That is just fact. Y’all can say what you want, because you’re breathing the fire of hate into an ocean of love.”
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Porter says his voice “has always saved me.” He found his in church. But as quickly as he realized the power of his tenor, he was quieted, told his style of performing was a “shame before God.” In school, on the streets and soon at home, Porter became a target.
“As a child, I became a grown man. In my mind, I lived that experience as if it was an affair. Because it was loving, it was nurturing, it was confusing. ‘Cause it was touch. It was what I needed; it was the illusion of care, of a big, strong man caring for me. Still, to this day, I’m not okay.”
courtesy Billy Porter
Porter began therapy at 25 and resumed it during the pandemic. “My sex life in relation to intimacy, it’s not — it’s not good at all,” he says. Married to longtime boyfriend Adam Smith, 40, since 2017, he still struggles with his past. “It’s really, really hard in a marriage, you know, when you’re trying to figure out how to be intimate with somebody. But we’re growing together and healing together. It’s a lot of hard work. Let me say, it’s worth it.”
Musical theater pointed him in the right direction. “I don’t think I’d be alive if I hadn’t discovered it,” he says. “If I hadn’t seen those things, likeThe WizandDreamgirls,then I never would’ve been able to dream outside of my circumstance.”
“I was dreaming big, but based on s— I had already seen,” Porter remembers. “I was working hard to be a sassy Black gay man on aShonda Rhimesprocedural drama.”
Working with Hollywood mega-creatorRyan MurphyonPose,whichended its three-season runin June, inspired him to build a Murphy-esque empire, creating content for the LGBTQ community. There’s a shoe collaboration with Jimmy Choo that is out now. A new pop song drops this month, with an album to be released next year. He recently costarred withCamila CabelloinCinderella,and he’s directing his first movie and continuing his activism for HIV awareness. (He came out as positive in May, revealing he’s been living with HIV since 2007.)
“I’m looking for legacy that lasts beyond my ego, beyond my faith, beyond my money,” he says. “Who am I changing? How does my art affect the world and make it a better place?”
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
