Billy Porter
Billy Porter is an actor, born 1969.
Billy Porter was a singer and a Broadway actor long before the screen worked out what to do with him. Born in Pittsburgh in 1969, he built a stage career, recorded as a solo artist, and then in 2013 played Lola in Kinky Boots, which brought him the Tony for best actor in a musical along with the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards; the show's album took the 2014 Grammy for best musical theater album. He credits the part with cracking open his feminine side and letting him confront toxic masculinity.
The film credits from before that run thin and small, which is the honest part of the story. He sang in the ensemble of Anastasia in 1997, played Taylor in The Broken Hearts Club, turned up in Noel and The Humbling. A Broadway leading man was being cast, when he was cast at all, in the margins of other people's films.
Pose changed the arithmetic. Pray Tell is a role built for a performer who can hold a room and then take the floor out from under it, and the series made him one of the most recognisable faces on American television. He also holds an Emmy for lead actor in a drama series. Everything since has been large and unmissable by design: the Fabulous Godmother in Cinderella, the Ghost of Christmas Present in Christmas Karma, and a part in the 2026 Hunger Games film.
Movies (14)
- The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (2026)
- Anastasia (1997)
- Cinderella (2021)
- 80 for Brady (2023)
- Like a Boss (2020)
- Noel (2004)
- Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
- Where Love Lives: A Story of Dancefloor Culture & Expression (2021)
- The Humbling (2014)
- I Was Born This Way (2025)
- Christmas Karma (2025)
- The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000)
- Our Son (2023)
- Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (2006)
TV (17)
- The Late Late Show with James Corden (2015)
- Tamron Hall (2019)
- POSE (2018)
- The Drew Barrymore Show (2020)
- Who Do You Think You Are? (2010)
- Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest (1972)
- The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (2022)
- Dear... (2020)
- Who's Talking to Chris Wallace? (2022)
- That's My Jam (2021)
- Trailblazer Honors (2014)
- Indie Sex (2007)
- Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star (2019)
- Middlemost Post (2021)
- That Damn Michael Che (2021)
- Visible: Out on Television (2020)
- Live from the Other Side with Tyler Henry (2024)
Where to start with Billy Porter
Nothing else here is close to POSE, so begin there. Pray Tell gets monologues, a ballroom microphone and a great deal of quiet, and the quiet is the surprise: for an actor with that much voltage, the best scenes in the series are the ones where he stops performing entirely.
After that, Cinderella is the popcorn version of the persona, big and camp and pitched at families, and a perfectly good demonstration of why casting directors want him in a costume. 80 for Brady and Like a Boss are light comedies in which he is the best thing in the room and plainly knows it.
For the early years, The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy is worth finding, a small ensemble film from 2000 that actually gave him something to play, and Anastasia is a curiosity, since he is in the vocal ensemble rather than the cast list most people read. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is next.