The celebrity of it all is nice, he explains, but that’s not particularly his end game.
As he described it, the look-that of a Sun God covered in gold jewelry-was Old Testament Realness: an emperor determined to collect the riches deprived him for thirty years. Several months later, in early May, he stunned on the Met Gala red carpet. At the 2019 Academy Awards, Porter conducted interviews on the red carpet wearing a dress. And yet, with all of that, it’s impossible to ignore the moment that thrust him into the mainstream. (That same year he married Adam Smith, who co-owns the eyewear company Native Ken in New York.) Now he's starring in a critically acclaimed FX show that boasts the largest cast of transgender actors in television history. In 2017, he recorded an album of Richard Rodgers’ songs. Soon after he penned an off-Broadway play. Porter's last six years read like a career-long resumé: In 2013, he originated the role of Lola, a drag queen and cabaret performer, in Broadway’s Kinky Boots, landing him his first Tony and Grammy awards. (Throughout the interview, he'll move himself into a dozen different positions, never once in the manner someone is supposed to sit in a chair.) As soon as he hits the chair, the shoes come off and his feet go up onto the seat of the chair. Porter greets me at the table, sporting a ruffled white blouse and slip-on loafers bedazzled with skulls. It’s the kind of place an executive on Pose might visit to flaunt how far removed he is from the rest of the world. Dangling above us in the club's restaurant where we talk are chandeliers studded with jade green gems. The day before his photo shoot, he meets me at the members-only Soho House in New York. It took thirty years for the world to catch up. But most of all, what he's sharing makes one thing clear-Billy Porter didn’t evolve into this phenomenon.
And now that people are listening, he has a few things he’d like to share: memories of breaking free from abuse and his own doubt. He’s caught the attention of fashion gurus with bold and stylish moments on the red carpet. Three decades after Porter’s career began, the people who once brushed him off for auditions are doing double takes. It's so beyond anything that I could've ever imagined this thing looking like.” “It's been such a battle that I'm trying to remember to feel all this,” he recalls as he changes from a white jumpsuit to a black suit with a threaded red sash.
Before any of that, however, on a Saturday afternoon in late May, he’s having eyeliner applied during an Esquire photoshoot, explaining his long road to a day like this. He’s a Tony and Grammy winner and, if the reviews are any indication, his turn as ballroom emcee Pray Tell in Ryan Murphy’s Pose could land him an Emmy nomination. In May, he lounged in gold from head to toe as six shirtless men hoisted him into the Met Gala on a chaise. In February, he staged a mutiny on Oscars red carpet style when he showed up in a black velvet Christian Siriano tuxedo gown. It wasn't until this year that Porter became widely known for his arrivals. At seventeen, he escaped home permanently, leaving behind homophobia and an abusive stepfather, about whom he hasn't spoken much, until now. At fifteen, he moved out of his house to live in a motel and work as a full-time summer entertainer at Kennywood Amusement Park. At eleven, he left the pulpit after giving his one and only sermon at his hometown Pittsburgh church. Billy Porter’s youth was defined by departures.