Pose star Billy Porter reveals he is HIV positive

Pose star Billy Porter, 51, reveals he’s HIV positive but kept it secret for 14 years because he was ‘ashamed’

  • Billy Porter, 51, revealed to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday that he has been living with HIV for 14 years
  • The Broadway star and award-winning actor was diagnosed back in June 2007
  • He kept it shrouded in secrecy for more than a decade because he feared it would harm his career and only recently told his mother
  • Until now, Porter 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’ 
  • The star said nobody involved in the show, which just finished filming its final season, knew he was drawing on his own experience and life 


Pose star Billy Porter has revealed he is HIV positive but kept his diagnosis secret for 14 years because he was ‘ashamed’. 

The 51-year-old Broadway star and award-winning actor, who broke his silence to The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, said he was diagnosed back in June 2007. 

He 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.  

‘For a long time, everybody who needed to know, knew – except for my mother. 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,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t a fear that (my status) was going to come out or that somebody was going to expose me; it was just the shame that it had happened in the first place. 

‘Yes, I am the statistic, but I’ve transcended it. This is what HIV-positive looks like now. I’m going to die from something else before I die from that. My T-cell levels are twice yours because of this medication. 

‘I’m the healthiest I’ve been in my entire life. So it’s time to let all that go and tell a different story. There’s no more stigma – let’s be done with that. It’s time. I’ve been living it and being in the shame of it for long enough.’ 

Pose star Billy Porter, 51, broke his 14-year silence on his HIV positive diagnosis in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday

Until now, Porter said he has been using his Pray Tell character (pictured above) in the FX series Pose, who is also HIV-positive, as his proxy

Until now, Porter said he has been using his Pray Tell character (pictured above) in the FX series Pose, who is also HIV-positive, as his proxy

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

Porter said he his secret from his mother for so many years because she had already faced so much ‘persecution’ from her Pentecostal church because he is gay.  

‘I didn’t want to put her through that. 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 revealed that he was diagnosed back in June 2007 but that he kept it shrouded in secrecy for more than a decade because he feared it would harm his career. He is pictured above the year he was diagnosed

Porter revealed that he was diagnosed back in June 2007 but that he kept it shrouded in secrecy for more than a decade because he feared it would harm his career. He is pictured above the year he was diagnosed

He decided, however, to rip ‘the Band-Aid off’ when his FX series Pose finished filming it’s final series and he called her.

‘She said, ‘You’ve been carrying this around for 14 years? Don’t ever do this again. I’m your mother, I love you no matter what. And I know I didn’t understand how to do that early on, but it’s been decades now’,’ he said. 

‘And it’s all true. It’s my own shame. Years of trauma makes a human being skittish. But the truth shall set you free. I feel my heart releasing.’ 

Until now, Porter 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’.

‘The brilliance of Pray Tell and this opportunity was that I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,’ Porter said.

The star added that nobody involved in the show knew he was drawing on his own experience and life. 

Porter has been married his eyewear designer husband Adam Smith since 2017 after the pair first met back in 2009.  

Porter has been married his eyewear designer husband Adam Smith since 2017 after the pair first met back in 2009

Porter has been married his eyewear designer husband Adam Smith since 2017 after the pair first met back in 2009

Porter said he only recently told his mother Cloerinda Ford (front). Porter said he his secret from his mother for so many years because she had already faced so much 'persecution' from her Pentecostal church because he is gay. He is pictured above with actress S. Epatha Merkerson (left) and his sister Mary Martha Ford (right)

Porter said he only recently told his mother Cloerinda Ford (front). Porter said he his secret from his mother for so many years because she had already faced so much ‘persecution’ from her Pentecostal church because he is gay. He is pictured above with actress S. Epatha Merkerson (left) and his sister Mary Martha Ford (right)