T BILLY’S CLUB
Broadway vet Porter steals the show in ‘Pose’
HE flamboyant heart of Ryan Murphy’s “Pose” is Pray Tell, emcee of the show’s lavish and hilarious drag balls — part of the series’ focus on different aspects of New York’s cultural life in 1987. As played by “Kinky Boots” Tony winner Billy Porter, 48, Pray has the haute couture sensibility of “Project Runway’s” Tim Gunn and the fiery delivery of James Baldwin. Every contestant who steps out on the floor in costume quakes as he makes his judgments — and when he throws shade, it’s a total solar eclipse. On “Dynasty” night for example, Pray Tell thundered at one under-dressed woman, “The category is ‘Dynasty,’ not goddamned ‘ Falcon Crest!’ ” Porter, 48, tells The Post he originally ad-libbed “Knots Landing” as the punchline but Murphy suggested the old Jane Wyman Napa Valley soap. Turns out there’s a lot of adlibbing going on in those drag ball scenes, with Porter taking suggestions for the catty putdowns from his boss, as well as the show’s writers and consultants. But the collaboration works both ways — Porter says he literally talked his way into a job.
“Pray Tell came when I walked into the room,” Porter says. “Essentially, I had auditioned for what was another part” — the dance teacher now played by Charlayne Woodard — “and I thought, ‘This is absolutely wrong.’ ”
After telling the casting director, “This [show] is about a culture I am part of. It wouldn’t make any sense to have me be on the outside,” Porter convinced Ryan Murphy to create Pray and make him “the grandfather of the whole community.”
Says Porter, “It’s the greatest gift.”
Besides providing Porter with a succulent plum of a part, “Pose” (airing Sundays at 9 p.m.) gives him an opportunity to draw on his own experience as a gay teen who was kicked out of his parents’ house in Pittsburgh.
“I grew up in the church. I was cast out early from my culture, my religion,” he says. “I had very religious parents. I had actual understanding before I was 11 that I had to find a new place for myself. The actual extrication happened around age 15 or 16. I had to find a place to exist.
“But I had my voice, my talent, my fabulosity. That was something that allowed me to eat, where I could have a career and a life. I got a scholarship to Carnegie-Mellon [in Pittsburgh]. I could do Broadway. I had angels in my life who showed up and shined the light in the direction to me that would be useful. I was really blessed to have that.”
While “Pose” spotlights the struggles of its trans characters to achieve acceptance in the mainstream and gay culture, the show also addresses New York’s AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s, with Blanca (M.J. Ramirez), one of its principal characters, receiving a HIV-positive diagnosis in the first episode. The experience of filming the series evokes “sobering” memories for Porter.
“I lost my first friend when I was 18,” he says. “By the time I was 21, I had lost more people than my grandmother had lost in her eighties.”
As the episodes progress, Pray Tell, like Blanca, finds himself on the front lines of the AIDS wars, yet Porter cautions against thinking “Pose” — sequins and feathers notwithstanding — is downbeat.
“Nothing’s sugar-coated at all. [The reality] is parceled out so that people can take it,” he says.
“The goal of the show is aspirational. At some point, somebody has to win. Or people won’t watch.”