He's Ready to Speak on It

Billy Porter spent decades dazzling in performance before he could be himself in public. He's making up for lost time.

- MIKELLE STREET

BILLY PORTER’S VOICE booms. It fills up a space, demanding to be listened to. It’s likely you know a mom with a voice like that—or a Black Pentecostal pastor who uses it to work his congregation into a sanctified frenzy. Porter speaks with a rasp that glides into clear, full-throated song, sometimes mid-sentence to emphasize a point. The voice has served him well on Broadway, where he debuted over 30 years ago. And as Pray Tell, the firecracker of a ballroom MC and an elder who rules with an always-on mic and a stern tongue on the FX show Pose.

In the second season, when a legend of the scene skips an important ACT UP protest, then struts into the ball in elaborate Marie Antoinette panniers, Pray becomes a pin in the balloon that is her moment of glory. “You are more concerned about winning a trophy than you are about our government spreading lies about us in an effort to kill us!” he says, his tone biting. “You want to know why they want us dead? Because we’re Black and we’re brown and we’re queer. They don’t give a shit about us. So we better start caring about ourselves. Show up for your lives.