In a recent interview with Variety,
actor Billy Porter remembered coming out gay at the height of the
AIDS crisis.
The 49-year-old Porter currently stars
on FX's Pose, the first scripted television series to include
a majority transgender cast. He's also played Lola in the Broadway
production of Kinky Boots.
Porter recalled coming out in the mid
80s.
“I came out as gay in 1985, it was
the middle of the AIDS crisis,” Porter said.
“It was a dark time, it was a dark,
dark time. We were living through a plague. And it was a group of
people that it felt like nobody cared about and that cloud was
hanging over the city in a really hard way,” he said.
Porter said that the “great part”
about Pose, which explores New York's vibrant ballroom scene
at the start of the AIDS epidemic, “is the choice to choose life
anyway.”
“It’s a powerful tool to have in
life in general and you can’t have a testimony unless you have a
test,” he said.
“If I’m being honest with you, I
never felt like this story being told would ever be an option. My
dreams have always been huge, but they’ve always been
spring-boarded off to something I had already seen. Never the
impossible,” Porter
said during his Actors on Actors interview.
Actors on Actors will air on PBS
June 18th and 20th.