Billy Porter

Billy Porter, born William Ellis Porter II on September 21, 1969, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an American singer, actor, writer, director, and businessperson whose career spans Broadway, television, film, and recording. He is the son of William Ellis Porter and Cloerinda Jean Johnson Porter Ford, and his sister is Mary Martha E. Ford. Porter grew up in a Pentecostal family and has spoken publicly about being sexually abused by his stepfather between the ages of 7 and 12. During the summers of 1985 through 1987, he performed daily at Kennywood, a Pittsburgh-area amusement park, as a member of entertainment groups called Spirit and Flash. He attended Reizenstein Middle School and graduated from both Allderdice High School and Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School in 1987. At the encouragement of a high school teacher, Porter applied to Carnegie Mellon University rather than moving directly to New York City, and he has credited that guidance as pivotal to his preparation for a professional career. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from Carnegie Mellon's College of Fine Arts in 1991 and later completed a certification in the graduate-level Professional Program in Screenwriting at UCLA.

Porter's Broadway career spans from 1991 to 2024. His early credits include Miss Saigon, which he appeared in both in 1991 and again in 1999, as well as Five Guys Named Moe and Dreamgirls. He played Teen Angel in the 1994 Broadway revival of Grease. Off-Broadway work during this period included the song cycles Myths and Hymns and Songs for a New World in 1995. In 1992, Porter appeared on the television talent competition Star Search, winning $100,000. In 2005, he wrote and performed the one-person autobiographical show Ghetto Superstar (The Man That I Am) at Joe's Pub in New York City, for which he received a nomination for Outstanding New York Theater at the 17th GLAAD Media Awards. That same year he also wrote the play While I Yet Live, which premiered Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in October 2014 with a cast that included Lillias White and S. Epatha Merkerson.

The role that brought Porter his widest Broadway recognition was Lola in Kinky Boots, which he originated in 2013. The production featured songs by Cyndi Lauper, a book by Harvey Fierstein, and direction and choreography by Jerry Mitchell. For that performance, Porter won the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. The following year he won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for the production's cast recording. Porter returned to the role of Lola in a 15-week Broadway run in September 2017. He has also appeared on Broadway in Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. In 2022, Porter won a second Tony Award, this time as a producer, when A Strange Loop took the Tony Award for Best Musical. At the 77th Tony Awards, he received the Isabelle Stevenson Award in recognition of his humanitarian work with the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and the Entertainment Community Fund.

Beyond Broadway, Porter starred in all three seasons of the FX television series Pose, playing Pray Tell beginning in 2018. The role earned him three Golden Globe Award nominations and the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, making him the first openly gay Black man to be nominated and to win in any lead acting category at the Primetime Emmys. In August 2018, he joined the cast of American Horror Story for its eighth season, subtitled Apocalypse. In 2020, Time magazine included Porter on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and he performed For What It's Worth alongside Stephen Stills during the 2020 Democratic National Convention. He made his feature film directorial debut in 2022 with the romantic comedy Anything's Possible.

Porter has released multiple solo albums, including Billy Porter on DV8/A&M Records in 1997, At the Corner of Broadway + Soul in 2005 on Sh-K-Boom Records, and Billy's Back on Broadway on Concord Music Group in 2014. In 2017 he released Billy Porter Presents the Soul of Richard Rodgers, an album of reimagined Richard Rodgers songs featuring collaborations with artists including Cynthia Erivo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Leslie Odom Jr., Patina Miller, Pentatonix, India Arie, Ledisi, Brandon Victor Dixon, Joshua Henry, Christopher Jackson, Todrick Hall, and Deborah Cox. He also contributed to the 2006 tribute album It's Only Life: The Songs of John Bucchino on PS Classics and appears on Adam Guettel's 1999 studio cast album Myths and Hymns on Nonesuch Records.