Emmy Award-winning Pose actor Billy Porter said when he tried to break into
Hollywood in the 1980s, the industry was only looking for three types of
African American actors — “James Earl Jones, the patriarch. Denzel
Washington, the sex symbol, or genius clown, Eddie Murphy.”
Porter
was none of the above, he told the audience Saturday night at the New Yorker
Festival in New York City. Yet he persevered.
The Broadway veteran added that his pop music career was also
sidelined back then because he is gay, despite an early deal with A&M
Records.
The music industry was “hugely, violently homophobic. It just
was never about the music,” Porter said. “It was about trying to fix myself
so other people would feel comfortable around me.”
So, “Where am
I fitting in?” he asked himself. “I became a character actor to hide behind
little weight and work so I could eat,” Porter explained in a wide-ranging
interview.
Things got so bad that he filed for bankruptcy and had
no apartment or health insurance for 13 years, he recalled. Then came his
stage role as Belize in the 2011 revival of Angels in America and his Tony
Award-winning run as Lola in Kinky Boosts in 2013.
“But the
calling in my life is where I am now,” he said about his role as Pray Tell
in FX drama Pose, a show that celebrates diversity.
“We must
speak life into ourselves, even when everyone around us is doing the
opposite,” he said, echoing his Emmy acceptance speech that spoke of
empowerment. “I never saw anything that looked like me, and visibility …
when we see ourselves reflected bac… is so important.”
“This is what a real man looks like too!” he said, standing to
showcase his reliably fabulous platform heels and a black skirt with a
thigh-high slit.
Interviewer Rachel Syme, who writes a fashion
and style column for The New Yorker, fondly recalled Porter’s tuxedo dress
that sparked a social media frenzy at the Academy Awards in February and the
side-brimmed hat he wore last month to the Emmy’s.
“Your hat’s
like, ‘I’m gonna fly away,” she said.
“Kapoof!” nodded Porter
with a huge smile.
