Actor and activist Billy Porter has revealed that he’s been living with HIV for 14 years in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

Porter fearer that disclosing his status publicly would be “another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession”. But bravely speaking out yesterday (Wed 20 May), he said: “There’s no more stigma – let’s be done with that. It’s time.”

“I was the generation that was supposed to know better, and it happened anyway,” he said.

“The shame of that time compounded with the shame that had already [accumulated] in my life silenced me, and I have lived with that shame in silence for 14 years. HIV-positive, where I come from, growing up in the Pentecostal church with a very religious family, is God’s punishment.”

He continued, “I was trying to have a life and a career, and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew.

“It would just be another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession. So I tried to think about it as little as I could. I tried to block it out.”

Porter decided the time is now, because “it’s time to grow up and move on because shame is destructive – and if not dealt with, it can destroy everything in its path”.

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Although Porter had already told those “that needed to know”, his mother wasn’t one of those until recently.

“I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I was the statistic that everybody said I would be.

“So I’d made a pact with myself that I would let her die before I told her. That’s what I was waiting for, if I’m being honest. When we moved her into the Actors Fund Nursing Home, I was like, ‘She’s not going to be here long, and then I’ll write my book and come out and she won’t have to live with the embarrassment of having an HIV-positive child.’

“That was five years ago. She ain’t going anywhere.”

Eventually, he told her over the phone on the last day of filming Pose.

“Not two minutes into the conversation, she’s like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ She’s like, ‘Son, please tell me what’s wrong.’

“So I ripped the Band-Aid off and I told her. She said, ‘You’ve been carrying this around for 14 years? Don’t ever do this again. I’m your mother, I love you no matter what. And I know I didn’t understand how to do that early on, but it’s been decades now.’

“And it’s all true. It’s my own shame. Years of trauma makes a human being skittish. But the truth shall set you free. I feel my heart releasing.”

Porter ended by stating that he’s in great health and will die of something other than this disease. Porter won an Emmy for his portrayal of Prey Tell in Pose, who is also living with HIV.

Porter joins the likes of Jonathan Van Ness who also came out publicly as HIV+ in 2019.