Actor Billy Porter revealed that he was diagnosed as HIV-positive 14 years ago and basically nobody knew, including his mom, in The Hollywood Reporter’s latest cover story.
“It was 2007, the worst year of my life,” Porter wrote in the story published Wednesday. “I was on the precipice of obscurity for about a decade or so, but 2007 was the worst of it.”
My truth. In my time. Thank you @THR. https://t.co/QWLe8jfdrc
— Billy Porter (@theebillyporter) May 19, 2021
Porter was diagnosed with both Type 2 diabetes and HIV/AIDS that year. Plus, he filed for bankruptcy, he wrote for The Hollywood Reporter.
“The shame of that time compounded with the shame that had already [accumulated] in my life silenced me, and I have lived with that shame in silence for 14 years,” Porter wrote. “HIV-positive, where I come from, growing up in the Pentecostal church with a very religious family, is God’s punishment.”
Porter said his role on “Pose” as Pray Tell helped him come to terms with revealing his diagnosis to the world.
“For a long time, everybody who needed to know, knew — except for my mother,” Porter wrote. “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.”
After Porter revealed the news to his mother, he told the cast and crew of “Pose.” Now, he’s telling the world.
“The truth is the healing,” Porter wrote. “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.”