Pose star Billy Porter reveals he is HIV-positive

Pose star Billy Porter has revealed he’s HIV-positive and said he kept the diagnosis a secret for 14 years due to “shame”.

His character on the Foxtel show is also HIV-positive, which helped him come to terms with his own diagnosis.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Porter opened up about his decades-long diagnosis.

The 51-year-old actor said: “I have to start in 2007. In June of that year, I was diagnosed HIV-positive”.

The actor said that he has told almost no one of his diagnosis fearing “marginalisation and retaliation”.
 

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Porter, who is known for his daring fashion sense on the red carpet, dubbed 2007 as “the worst year of my life”.

“I was on the precipice of obscurity for about a decade or so, but 2007 was the worst of it,” he said.

“By February, I had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. By March, I signed bankruptcy papers. And by June, I was diagnosed HIV-positive.

“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.

“HIV positive, where I come from, growing up in the Pentecostal church with a very religious family, is God’s punishment.”

The American Horror Story star claimed he found out when he went to the doctor to get a pimple looked at.

“The queen at the front desk was like, ‘You want an HIV test? They only $10.’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s time.’ I got tested every six months, like you were supposed to,” he recounted.

“So I went in, got the pimple drained and got tested, and then the doctor came back and looked at me. I was like, ‘What?’ He sat down, and I was like, ‘No. Nooo.’ And he said, ‘Your test came back positive.’”

Porter explained that “everybody who needed to know, knew – except for my mother,” adding he was worried that if the wrong people found out, his life and career would be over.

“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.”
 

The style icon then claimed that the COVID-19 lockdown made him sit down and reflect on his life, pushing him to seek trauma therapy.

“I started peeling back all these layers: Having been sent to a psychologist at age five because I came out of the womb a big old queen; being sexually abused by my stepfather from the time I was seven to the time I was 12; coming out at 16 in the middle of the AIDS crisis,” he said, adding that he had been going to therapy for years but never dealt with the real issues.

However, he acknowledged that his Pose character helped him come to terms with his diagnosis.

“Then came Pose. An opportunity to work through the shame [of HIV] and where I have gotten to in this moment.

“And the brilliance of [character] Pray Tell and this opportunity was that I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate.

“My compartmentalising and disassociation muscles are very, very strong, so I had no idea I was being traumatised or triggered.

“I was just happy that somebody was finally taking me seriously as an actor.”

It was his character who helped him open up to his mum, especially after claiming that he would much rather wait until she died before he told her.

“I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was the statistic that everybody said I would be. So I’d made a pact with myself that I would let her die before I told her. That’s what I was waiting for, if I’m being honest,” he said.
 

Porter told his mum over the phone last year and she told him that she loved him.

As to why he’s speaking out 14 years later, Porter told the outlet: “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 sh*t 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.”

Porter told The Hollywood Reporter that he and his husband, Adam Smith, are trying to have a family.

Smith is a successful businessman who co-owns a luxury eyewear brand called Native Ken.

After meeting in 2009, the two dated for some time before breaking up. They reunited again in 2015 and got married two years later.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission