Celebrating Black History Month: Billy Porter
Actor and activist Billy Porter was born on September 21, 1969, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, as well as the Pittsburgh School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where he studied acting, music, and dance. He later attended Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama in Pittsburgh, graduating in 1991.
In 1991, Porter was cast in the ensemble of Miss Saigon, which won three Tony Awards and became one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history. Throughout the 1990s, he continued to appear in Broadway musicals, including Five Guys Named Moe, Smokey Joe’s Café, and the 1994 revival of Grease, in which he played Teen Angel.
Porter pursued a career in the music industry, winning the 1992 season of the talent competition Star Search and releasing a self-titled R&B album in 1997 with A&M Records. Starting in 2000, started to direct productions like the music revue Being Alive at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Los Angeles staging of Once on This Island, and a revival of George C. Wolfe’s play, The Colored Museum.
Porter wrote the solo performance piece Ghetto Superstar, which he debuted in 2005 at New York City’s Public Theatre. He went on to appear in the Pittsburgh premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, as well as in the off-Broadway revival of Angels in America at the Signature Theatre in New York City in 2010, where he played Belize.
In 2013, Porter returned to Broadway as Lola in the musical Kinky Boots, winning the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, and the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for his performance.
In the years following, Porter wrote the semi-autobiographical play While I Yet Live, which premiered at Primary Stages in New York City in 2014, and played Aubrey Lyles in the 2016 Broadway musical Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.
In 2018, Porter became a series regular in the television show Pose. Porter’s role in the show made history as the first openly gay black man to win an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama. This achievement catapulted him to mainstream fame, as well as establishing him as an LGBT+ icon.
From overcoming homophobia to denouncing US President Donald Trump’s anti-LGBT+ policies, Porter has long been a source of inspiration for the LGBT+ community.
Last February, Donald Trump wasn’t the only one who delivered a State of the Union address. Porter gave his second LGBTQ State of the Union for Logo TV hours before Trump addressed Congress and the nation. He pointed out Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies: the President’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, his support of the so-called conscience rule that would allow health professionals to refuse LGBTQ+ people on the basis of their belief, and the appointment of anti-LGBTQ+ judges. “Every act of love is a blow against hate,” he said. “We may have a tough fight against us, but I know we can win it.”
His red carpet statements are iconic. They speak for LGBTQ+ rights, turn heads and lead fashion forward at the same time.
