Billy Porter says being alive is ‘an accomplishment’ after he became HIV positive, diabetic and bankrupt over five months during ‘the worst year of his life’

Billy Porter has opened up on the ‘worst year of his life’ after he was diagnosed with diabetes, filed for bankruptcy and became HIV positive over the course of five months in 2007.

The Pose star, 54, candidly admitted that he survived ‘a lot of trauma’ after coming out at 16 years old and grew up being ‘essentially cursed’ for being a gay black man. 

He said that the fact he has survived this long as ‘an accomplishment’, stating: ‘I’m not supposed to be here.’

Billy added that his endurance shows that people can get through tough times, and ‘can transcend whatever befalls us, get back up again’.

Speaking on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast, he explained: ‘I’ve lived through a lot of trauma. I came out in 1985 when I was 16 years old. 

‘We went straight to the front lines to fight for our lives during the AIDS crisis. I was diagnosed with HIV in 2007, I grew up in an environment that essentially cursed me. 

‘I grew up in the black church. They told me from their pulpits as often as they could that I would never be blessed. The structure of our societies that look at me as a black man and look at me as a gay man and completely dismiss me from existence on the planet as a human being, all of these things weigh into my art. 

‘The only way I know how to respond is through my art and inside of the art. I’m alive – what an accomplishment. I’m not supposed to be here. 

‘2007 was the worst year of my life. February, I was diagnosed with diabetes, March I had to file for bankruptcy and by June I was HIV positive. I had become the statistic that they all said I would be. 

‘And guess what? None of that matters. None of the rhetoric has any credibility anymore because this is what all of that looks like now. 

‘This is what the queen looks like. This is what the diabetic looks like. This is what the HIV positive looks like. This is what bankruptcy looks like. This is what it looks like. 

‘We can all transcend whatever befalls us, get back up again. We fall down, but we get up.’

Billy revealed he is HIV positive for the first time in 2021, saying he kept his diagnosis secret for 14 years because he was ‘ashamed’.

The Emmy, Grammy and Tony award winner admitted that he kept his diagnosis shrouded in secrecy for more than a decade because he feared, in part, that it would harm his career.   

He only recently told his mother after initially deciding he would only go public with his diagnosis after she died. 

Billy said he kept his secret from his mother for so many years because she had already faced so much ‘persecution’ from her Pentecostal church after he came out as gay as a teen.

The actor said he has been using his Pose character Pray Tell – who is also HIV-positive – as his proxy, saying that it helped him ‘work through the shame’.

Elsewhere in the podcast interview, Billy spoke about his survivors guilt from losing so many friends to AIDS over the years and said he saw his queerness as a ‘superpower’, rejecting the words ‘acceptance’ and ‘tolerance’.

He said: ‘There are two words that I can’t stand in relation to the queer community, and that’s acceptance and tolerance. I don’t need anybody’s acceptance or tolerance to give me permission to exist on this planet. I don’t need any of that. 

‘The demand is respect for my humanity as I respect everybody else’s, period. That’s it. If you can’t do that, move out of my way. Move because there’s work to do. 

‘So I am an artist first and all of the work that I choose is based on service. How can I be of service through the work that I do for a living? What does that look like? 

‘I was watching Oprah over 20 years ago and she had Maya Angelou on and they were talking about service. And their theory is when you shift your intention to service, everything else will work itself out. 

‘And I asked myself what that looked like right after that show. And it hit me like a tonne of bricks. It’s your queerness. It’s that thing that everybody is telling you is your liability. Everybody told me my queerness would be my liability. 

‘And it was for decades. It was. And now it’s my superpower. I am just so grateful that I lived long enough to see this day I’m alive. What an accomplishment.’

He went on: ‘I lost more friends to AIDS by the age of 21 than my 85 year old grandmother had. We’ve been through some stuff. My generation, we have. 

‘And for those of us who are still here, I used to have survivor’s guilt and ask why am I here and why am I here? 

‘And boy did Pose, I never would’ve imagined when I got into this business in the eighties, that Pray Tell and Pose would ever be a thing.

‘I spent the first 25 years of my life just trying to be straight enough in other people’s eyes or be perceived as straight enough so that I could eat. 

‘So what’s happening right now in the world, to me in general, in the queer community, in the black community, in our evolution as humanity, it’s magical. 

‘And of course with that comes a pushback. There’s a lot of good s**t happening in the world. And we always lean into the negative, speak life into yourselves. Y’all speak life into us. 

‘And that doesn’t mean ignoring the truth. That actually means honouring the truth, honouring what’s real, and honouring your truth, honouring my truth, honouring the truth, and being able to engage with the world properly.’

Following his hardships, Billy returned to trauma therapy during the pandemic in order to find self-love and compassion for himself.

He recalled: ‘I went into trauma therapy during Covid, I had a chance to slow down and stop, which is not something as a workaholic that I ever think about doing. 

‘If the world hadn’t stopped and we were all forced into this shutdown thing, I don’t know that I ever would’ve had the time, made the time, knew that I needed to make the time to do a different kind of work to heal the trauma in my life so I could really move forward. 

‘I had gotten to a place where I had gone as far as I could go emotionally, spiritually, physically, everything, and I needed some more excavation.’

He continued: ‘I’m so hard on myself. I had no compassion for myself and my trauma therapist spent the first three months just working on self-compassion. 

‘And it’s not second nature to us as humans to have self-compassion because that means that you have to forgive yourself. You have to sit in the uncomfortable situation of not having all the answers, not being perfect, feeling bad, and allowing myself to feel bad today. 

‘That’s how I feel today. And this too shall pass, just working through one’s humanity. When we can figure out how to breathe and just put one foot in front of the other every day, it will all be okay. It will be okay.…

‘And don’t cry for me, Argentina. I have a lot of blessings in my life. Even the blessing of coming to the knowledge of understanding that a healing needed to take place to begin is the gift. 

‘So many people don’t even know that. So many people don’t even recognise that work needs to be done internally on yourself. 

‘I’m not a person to ever blame anybody for anything. I take responsibility for all things in my life. Now, with that said, I had to find some compassion in that process. That was the space where I would really just beat myself up. 

‘It’s really empowering in the greatest way and as I get older, the choices I make in life have gotten way more specific and way more grounded and way more present, calculated, measured.’

Billy concluded: ‘I’m 54 years old. It’s like it is time to hit it. I got things to do, darling. We’re busy.’