In a recent interview, Billy Porter
said that Pose has taught him “to dream the impossible.”
Porter, 49, stars as Pray Tell in FX's
Pose.
Pose explores
New York's vibrant ball scene of the 1980s. It features
television's largest cast of transgender actors in series regular
roles and the largest LGBTQ cast ever for a scripted series,
according to FX. It was recently renewed for a third season.
Porter recently received an Emmy
nomination for his work on the series, making him the first openly
gay black man to be nominated for an Emmy.
Speaking with Deadline, Porter
was asked what he hopes “happens with Pray Tell in future seasons?”
“Oh God, I haven’t even thought
about that,” he
answered. “I’m trying to be in the minute that I’m in. I’ve
just got the first Emmy nomination and you all asking me about next
year [laughs].”
“I would hope that he would find a
space to explore relationships so that we can show how difficult that
is. I think those of us who are my age who lived through [the AIDS
crisis], we still have PTSD and we’re still trying to figure out
what that means. What does it mean to be in a same-sex relationship,
let alone marriage? That wasn’t stuff that we even had any context
to begin dreaming about. There was no dream about it because there
was no context to even think about the possibility of that. I always
talk about this a lot. How Ryan [Murphy], this company, this show,
and all these people have taught me to dream the impossible.”
“I’ve never dreamed that the kind
of success that I wanted in this industry could look like this, could
be this version. I was trying to create some masculine alter ego so I
could work. To meet some standard so that I could literally just get
a job. It’s all so fresh and new and all so unbelievable to me that
I’m trying to just stay present and walk through with a little
grace and style,” he continued.
Porter said that some scenes were
difficult for him.
“The HIV diagnosis things are really
hard,” he said. “It's so real for me because I lived it.”