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Billy Porter: directing the bitter and the sweet in a stunning new play

Billy Porter: directing the bitter and the sweet in a stunning new play

When Billy Porter enters the room he doesn’t so much light it up as detonate it, writes CARY GEE. After methodically “charging up all the things one must charge nowadays”, he’s ready to sit down for a chat. He clearly requires no charging himself. Or does he?

Porter has been living in London since the start of the year, performing nightly on stage as the Emcee in Cabaret. How is he enjoying life in the capital?

“I love London. I thought that I would be more social but eight shows a week at 55. I’m tired!”

Now that his run at the Kit Kat Club has ended Porter is set to direct a play at London’s Soho Theatre.

This Bitter Earth by Harrison David Rivers is a searingly honest drama about an interracial gay relationship between Jesse, an introspective Black playwright, and his partner, a white Black Lives Matter activist. Why was Billy drawn to this particular play?

“This play came to me because the producer found me. He wanted me to do it. I was in Soho House last year and an associate of his saw me, came over and talked to me. He said, ‘I know I’m not allowed to talk to you here…They have RULES!” says Billy, laughing.

“He says he sent a script to my agent. Had I heard about it?’

“I had not but I took his number, asked him to send me the script. I read the play. It’s extraordinary.”

Playing the part of playwright Jesse is young British actor Omari Douglas, perhaps best known here for playing Roscoe Babatunde in the award-winning AIDS drama It’s A Sin. He stars opposite Alexander Lincoln (Everything I Know About Love).

“They are wonderful, wonderful actors” Billy enthuses. “The play is a two-hander; they are in an interracial, queer, gay relationship during the civil unrest from 2012 —2016 in New York and Minneapolis.

“It asks the questions that many people in interracial relationships don’t ask. And don’t talk about. Race is a thing, and if you didn’t know it before you know it now.

“When you are in an interracial relationship you have to have uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes those conversations aren’t pleasant.”

Is race as big a thing in London as it is America?

“Yes. But you are all more polite about it. But it’s the same thing all over the world.”

Was Billy not tempted by the part himself? “No. I’m too old!”

Already an established star of both the stage and screen in the US, Porter won a Tony award for originating the role of drag queen Lola in Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Feinstein’s musical Kinky Boots, along with a Grammy for the accompanying album.

It was his role as Pray Tell in the groundbreaking TV series Pose that catapulted him into the stratosphere.

He became the first gay Black man to win a primetime Emmy (for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama) and in 2020 was included in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world list.

Pose is set in the Ball scene of late 1980s New York City, an LGBTQ+ subculture that inspired, among other crazes, Vogueing.

Was this a scene that Billy was involved with himself?

“I was adjacent to the Ball scene. I was blessed to come to New York to be in the original cast of Miss Saigon on Broadway. The Ball culture and the movie Paris is Burning came out right when I moved to New York. That’s my era. It was the first time I had seen anyone on screen that looked like me. A queer Black man. It changed everything for me. It was crazy. Wild.”

It was also a very dark time for the LGBTQ+ community, set against the AIDS epidemic. Was it at all difficult for Billy to revisit those days?

“There was emotional trauma in playing the character. I had to do a lot of work outside of the show to make sure I could maintain some semblance of sanity.

“It was right at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. After the theatre ended we went straight to the front line to fight for our lives. I did live it. I was one of the only people on the [Pose] set who was old enough to have lived it. It was hard. It was not an easy show to do.”

Did he entertain any doubts about taking the role on?

“Never. Never.”

The only major accolade missing from Billy’s mantelpiece is his own Oscar. But Billy has been working on a biopic of Black LGBT civil rights activist and writer James Baldwin. Might this be the role that turns him into a bona fide EGOT? (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner).

“The business has shifted in the last couple of years with the [writers’] strikes and Trump. We don’t currently have the funding. I have many ways, many paths I can take to get the ‘O’ but that’s not the focus of my work.”

Is it his work that Billy is most proud of, or the fact that he is an out there Black, queer man?

“I struggle sometimes. It’s not easy, actually, being a ‘first of something’ but I am proud of who I am, and how I take up space in the world. I was told my queerness would be my liability, and it was for a long time.”

At what point did it cease to be a liability? “It’s still a liability but you just push through it.”

Does Billy think LGBTQ+ rights have slipped backwards at all with the re-election of Trump to the presidency?

“I think that in America we are in a season of ‘Yes’ or ‘No”. I choose Joy. I choose to believe in the human spirit. I choose to believe in humanity. It’s dark right now. We’ll see. We have to be present. We have to be strong. We have to be open and ready for whatever is coming.”

Where does Billy draw his own strength from? Who was his greatest influence?

“My mother. A Black woman, disabled [by medical malpractice], born in 1935. The life she lived and the choices she made, to choose joy and unconditional love, is my greatest gift’.

Does Billy hope to pass that same joy on through his performances?

“Yes, I do. My mother was a very religious woman. She had a really hard time with the gay thing for a long time. But she transformed, she grew. Her expansion, her love, was something that takes my breath away.”

We are in Pride season. Does Billy remember his first Pride?

“Yes! It was in New York. I was 19. I was doing Joseph. All the gays in the show said, “Come meet us, we’re going to march in the parade.”’

Billy pauses, then stresses that it is a march. Not a parade.

“I didn’t know where I was going. I was a little late. My friend put a sign over my head: ‘Silence Equals Death’. We marched down the street chanting, ‘Act Up. Fight Back. Fight AIDS’.

“It was pretty magical and a defining moment for me. When I came out, Pride was about community, Pride was about organising. Pride was our civil rights movement.”

Has Pride become too much of a party?

“No. Because the party is the Healing. The Healing is inside the dance… is inside the party. That’s the Healing. That’s Gay Church.”

This Bitter Earth, directed by Billy Porter, is at the Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D 3NE from 18 June until 26 July

Go to: Soho Theatre

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