Billy Porter GOES OFF: "I Will Be As Extra As I Need To Be."
In a 90-minute interview, the "Kinky Boots" and "Pose" star was vulnerable, thoughtful and very frank about sex, intimacy and grieving his mother. But Porter will GO OFF when he has to. Just read...
Caftaners, hi! I write you on an absolutely perfect mid-October NYC Saturday, just a few days after coming back from a really great three weeks in London, Rome and Greece—the latter of which I went to with my half-Greek(-American) cousin who had never been there.
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to vomit with dread about November 5 and its aftermath. Next week I am going to do some canvassing for Kamala and the other Dems in Pennsylvania, because if she (and they) don’t win, I don’t want to feel guilt on top of all my other bad feelings. Haha. But that’s the truth.
But I never want to devote too much time on Caftan to the shitshow that is the world currently. (Believe me, I spend most of the rest of my time reading or thinking about it.) I DO want to put a question to you dear and loyal readers, which is: Would you like these interviews in audio rather than, or in addition to, print? Many people have suggested I do that. I’ve demurred because a. I think there’s a glut of podcasts in the world, b. I came up an old-fashioned print journalist and c. personally, I find it faster to read something than to listen to it. Would you be so kind as to give me your feedback in the comments section at the end of the interview? I’d include some audio (it’s lively!) from the interview you’re about to read, but I didn’t tell the subject I planned to do that, so I don’t feel right about it this time.
And the subject is… (haha, doesn’t that sound just like “The category is….” at the beginning of Pose?): BILLY PORTER! I got this interview I think mainly because BP and I know someone in common who showed Billy something I wrote for TV a while back. (Nothing came of it, but that’s okay.) Once Billy’s sweet assistant Melanie told me Billy was open to doing the interview, I had one goal: I wanted to try to get past “BILLY PORTER!!!” and connect with the inner life of Billy Porter. And even though a friend told me he doesn’t think I should precede these interviews with my own thoughts about them—as in, whether I think it’s a good or bad interview—I will say that I think I succeeded in that goal. Billy can dial up fast (as you’ll see in places), and I didn’t want to egg him on that way, as I think interviewers often do. I’m not saying I don’t like Billy’s BIG side—which, you’ll see, he strongly defends—but I’ve known of Billy for years here in NYC when he was mainly NYC-famous, pre-Kinky Boots and Pose, and I suspected there was a deep, sensitive and vulnerable person there, a gay man with his share of wounds and complexities, and I think that comes through. You tell me!
I want to shout-out Billy’s new EP Black Mona Lisa Vol. 2: The Cookout Sessions…
…and I also want to shout-out his very, very good memoir from 2021, Unprotected, which he is going to re-release at some point in the near future with an addenda.
The memoir really helped me prepare for this interview. It goes deep into the years-long sexual abuse that boy Billy experienced at the hands of his stepfather. It also recounts his artistic and performance education and how a series of “angels” (mainly in the form of teachers) coupled with his own formidable talent and ambition got him to where he is today. I also want to shout out that he is very likely going to be making his West End debut early next year, although he could only tell me IN WHAT off the record for the time being. But I guess you’ll see soon.
I also want to say I’m grateful for the new paid subscribers since the last interview with the incredible Don Shewey and I’ve already got some good interviews lined up for after this. I know I’m a broken record in this regard, but: if you’ve long been an unpaid subscriber and you like these interviews, please consider subscribing for only $5 a month.
I will be honest about something: I’m a freelance journalist for a living, and scraping together enough assignments for a decent haul every month is HARD. I would love, as I’ve said before, to get to the point where Caftan is my main income source and hence my main preoccupation—where I could be putting out an interview and some other I hope useful-for-our-“mature”-gay-lives items on a weekly basis. That’s my enduring goal. Please help me make it happen! Please tell friends about Caftan if you like it, by posting about it or by word of mouth, and ask them to subscribe. I’d appreciate that so much.
And in the meantime, here is Billy Porter, to whom I’m really grateful for this interview. Billy showed up for it with his whole, complex, layered self—not afraid to come off as less than shiny, perfect and thriving, which I really appreciate.
Billy, thanks for doing this interview now that you’re back in NYC for a spell after being out performing on the road all summer. Can you tell me about a typical day like when you’re in your house in New York —in Chelsea?
My apartment is actually in [the sleek new micro-neighborhood of] Hudson Yards. It’s not as fancy as it sounds. I mean, it is, but it’s one of the last prewar buildings that everything was built up around. It feels like that house from the movie Up.
A friend of mine who’s a builder found it for me. I’m in the middle of a divorce [from Adam Smith, his husband of six years].
We were downsizing during the [Hollywood] strike. I had to sell my house, blah blah blah.
Your house in L.A?
No, in Bellport, Long Island. So I came down here [to this rental apartment] for $3400 and my friend the builder, I call him Daddy Mike, he redid the whole thing for me. I have a brand-new remodeled apartment in one of these prewar buildings. And it’s gorgeous. The only issue I have, and this is a good but challenging one, is that it’s very womb-y, which is great. It does get some light. It’s right at the High Line [the tourist-heavy park converted from an old elevated freight track on Manhattan’s West Side].
From my back window I can see it. So the sun reflects off a mirrored building and sheds light into my apartment that’s just a little below ground. Now, my mom passed in February.
I know. I’m sorry.
Thank you. And there’s a lot of grief happening. But it happens, it’s not linear and I’ve been on the road this summer playing festivals and Prides with my new music and dancers and visuals. And it’s been great, but I haven’t been home for more than four days in a row since April. So when I finally get a chance to sit down, then the grief sets in. I’ve been in this apartment for four days in the bed, because it is so warm, it hugs me so deeply. It’s like I’m trying to allow myself to grieve because if I don’t, then I can’t move forward. So I’m really trying to do something different post-Covid, you know? I had a lot of time to change the way I move through life. Going through trauma therapy and really sort of giving myself the space for self-care. Trying to not always be so hard on myself, like if I need time, take time. That has been great in this apartment.
I like to talk to people about their parents. Because we’re at that age when that loss happens and we often have complex relationships with one or both parents. Do you feel capable of talking about your mother a bit?
Of course!
Okay. So my dad died seven years ago but we weren’t close. I always ask friends who were closer to a parent, when they lose them, what does it feel like? Your mom died only last February. What does it feel like in your body? What does the world feel like to you now?
Uhhh. Words fail. Um. That song from “Dear Evan Hansen” is so profound to me. I don’t have any words for this feeling. I am speechless. Um—and I’m so grateful that we— that there was nothing left unsaid between us. Nothing. The love that we had for each other is indescribable. She was the greatest human being that walked the face of this earth, in my opinion. She was the personification of what Jesus was, you know? She was a Christian woman. And when she was challenged with my gayness, with having a gay son, she went and did the work that Jesus told her to do to understand me. And to love me. And thereby to love all of us [gay people] unconditionally, which is what the Bible says to do. She— she chose me. She chose us. And that’s a particularly profound thing because in her life, she was born with a [degenerative neurological] disability. Her body betrayed her but her mind was always fine. And so she fought back her whole life. So there was an entrance for me and my queerness because she understood what it felt like to be othered for no reason. She had to live in a world where she was just ostracized for no fault of her own. She was born that way. And that’s one of the things that was able to connect us.
Was she ever able to articulate that? In the memoir you talk about the painful letter she sent you where she wrote, “I still want you to come out of this lifestyle and come to Jesus.” So what was the follow-up to that? And also, did she ever actually say to you, “I know what it feels like to be different and to be mocked for it.”
Well, yeah. I mean, I brought that to her attention. And that was one of the things that flipped her.
You made the connection for her.
Yeah, I did. And she really did a 180. And, you know, people from her church community were literally calling her and telling her that she was going to burn in hell for loving her gay son.
Oh my God. This was when? A decade ago?
It went on for a while.
And she never left that church?
No, she did. She left to go to a queer-affirming church because of me.
Wow. That’s pretty beautiful.
Yeah. She chose me. She chose us.
Who do you mean by us?
Our community. Us. She chose us. She was told she would probably never be able to live on her own or live past 30. She did all those things. She lived to 79, on her own until the last eight years of her life. She went out on her scooter and did her life. I would have friends call me from Pittsburgh, “We ran into your mom downtown. She almost ran us over.” By the end, she was going to Gay Pride in Pittsburgh by herself and would run into my friends and end up hanging out with them.
Did she ever say “I’m sorry”?
Yeah.
How?
I was doing “Ghetto Superstar,” my one-person show that I created in 2005 at The Public in NYC…
…then I took it home to Pittsburgh where it ran for a month. And she came five days in a row. I was like, “Mom, are you coming every day?” And she was like, “I need to come every day. Because I didn’t understand how to be there for you before. And I need you to know that I know now. And I have to show you what that looks like. And it looks like me being here every day for you.”