Billy Porter Reflects on Healing Through Starring on Pose
By PbNews24 On Jul 14, 2021
Pose may have come to an end, but for Billy Porter, "It's time to tell a different story."
The 51-year-old actor just scored his third Emmy nomination for his role as Pray Tell on FX's Pose, which aired its series finale on June 6. The show ended with Pray Tell's death after his battle with HIV/AIDS, just a few weeks after Porter revealed that he had been living with a positive HIV diagnosis for 14 years.
In the wake of his latest Lead Actor nom, Porter tells E! News that playing the character was a true healing experience.
"What I understood from day one was that I could use Pose and the character of Pray Tell in proxy for my own healing and my own journey with trauma and grief as it relates to that time period," he says. "One of the things that has stuck out for me about the whole thing is a lot of my older friends were calling and saying, 'Oh, I didn't know that I had anything left to process.'"