Pride Month is in full swing, and LGBTQIA+ icon Billy Porter is reflecting on his first time celebrating 35 years ago.
“The first time that [Pride] was remotely a thing in my mind, I was probably 19,” Porter, 54, told Us Weekly exclusively at iHeartRadio and P&G’s Can’t Cancel Pride Event. “I was brought to my first Pride March around 1989. I didn’t know who I would be walking with. And I ended up walking with ACT UP.”
The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded in 1987 to end the AIDS pandemic and improve the lives of those living with the disease. Porter — who came out as gay when he was 16 years old at the height of the AIDS crisis — was later diagnosed with HIV in 2007.
“I was late and a friend of mine pulled me into [the parade],” Porter recalled of his first Pride. “He’s like, ‘you’re late,’ and I didn’t know how to get there. There was no GPS. He pulled me in and put a T-shirt on me that said, ‘Silence Equals Death.’”
The ‘Silence Equals Death’ slogan and imagery was central to ACT UP’s campaign against the AIDS epidemic. To this day, the pink triangle that typically accompanies the phrase is synonymous with AIDS activism.
“I was sort of swooped up in it before I knew,” Porter told Us. “That was a really defining moment for me.”
Just two years after his first Pride parade, Porter would make his broadway debut in Miss Saigon — the beginning of a storied career in the theater and beyond. The multihyphenate has prioritized activism alongside his career in the entertainment industry since he started.
For his work in LGBTQIA+-positive roles, such as in Kinky Boots on Broadway and on FX’s Pose, Porter has received a Tony, a Grammy, a Primetime Emmy Award and the GLAAD Vito Russo Award.
Pose premiered in 2018, 11 years after Porter’s HIV diagnosis. Yet, the actor had not spoken publicly about his condition. He hadn’t even told his mother.
“I was trying to have a life and a career, and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew,” Porter told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, telling the world about his diagnosis for the first time. “It would just be another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession.”
The FX show provided a cathartic release for Porter, and “an opportunity to work through the shame” of HIV.
“The brilliance of [my character] Pray Tell and this opportunity was that I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,” he told the outlet. “My compartmentalizing and disassociation muscles are very, very strong, so I had no idea I was being traumatized or triggered. I was just happy that somebody was finally taking me seriously as an actor.”
35 years after his first Pride March and 17 years since his HIV diagnosis, Porter is as dedicated to the cause as ever.
“There is power in us all coming together and working toward a common goal,” he told Us. “That common goal is equality. For everybody. For everybody! We’re coming from a queer perspective, but we’re also fighting for everybody.”
Fans can tune in to the one-hour benefit special, produced by iHeartMedia and P&G, on iHeartRadio’s YouTube and Facebook pages, Hulu and Revry on June 12 at 8 p.m. ET, and the special will be available to stream throughout Pride Month.
With reporting by Kevin Zelman
