Actor Billy Porter has opened up about being diagnosed as HIV-positive over a decade ago, saying that a deep-rooted shame compelled him to hide his condition.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Emmy-winning star of Pose spoke for the first time about being diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2007, saying he has "lived with that shame in silence for 14 years".
The 51-year-old actor, famous for his HIV-positive character Pray Tell in Ryan Murphy's FX drama Pose, worried about telling his mother the truth about his diagnosis.
He explained: "My mother had been through so much already, so much persecution by her religious community because of my queerness, that I just didn't want her to have to live through their 'I told you so's'.
"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."
Porter also worried about being marginalised in his career if his condition was made known.
"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.
"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 Pray Tell and this opportunity was that I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate."
For the first time since being diagnosed 14 years ago, @TheeBillyPorter opens up about the shame that compelled him to hide his diagnosis from his castmates, collaborators and mother, and the responsibility and gratitude that now empowers him to speak out https://t.co/MrfzphPtrI
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 19, 2021
When he finally "ripped the Band-Aid off" and told his mother, her reaction was not what he expected.
"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 described the relief he has felt since then: "I feel my heart releasing. It had felt like a hand was holding my heart clenched for years - for years - and it's all gone."
He said he had a "feeling of dread, all day, every day" up until this point.
"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," he explained.
"And as a Black person, particularly a Black man on this planet, you have to be perfect or you will get killed. But look at me. 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.
"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."
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