Billy Porter talks impact of ‘Pose’
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Emmy-nominated for best actor on FX’s “Pose” (10 p.m. Tuesdays), Pittsburgh native Billy Porter said after a three-decade career, largely on Broadway, he appreciates the platform that a prime-time television series provides.
“This moment in my life has cracked open a space … that I have never experienced in my life,” he said during a press conference earlier this month at the Television Critics Association summer 2019 press tour. “What has surprised me is the reach of who has been influenced by our work and our message on this show.”
“Pose” follows members of the LGBTQ community whose lives are immersed in the New York ballroom culture of 1990.
“I’ve been approached on the street by many older, white people — I mean, like, late 60s, 70s even 80s — who will fangirl out about ‘Pose.’ That is really surprising and encouraging,” Porter said. “They pretty much talk about the message of family in the show, that everybody is looking to be loved and everybody just wants to have a family. That’s the part of our show that truly connects across all lines.”
Porter, who plans to wear a custom Michael Kors outfit to the Emmys in September, was surprised when the “Pose” writers gave him a sex scene in a recent episode.
“Listen here, I got that contract, and that contract said nudity clause, and I literally sat there and said, ‘Child, they don’t want to see my black [body] naked,’ and I signed it never thinking in a million years anybody would call me on it,” Porter said, laughing, before turning more serious. “I have been in this business as everybody knows for 30 years, and I have been out from the beginning,” and for most of that time queer people were never depicted as sexualized beings the way straight characters long have been shown.
“Even when they started telling stories of love they were always white boys, and I have spent my entire career never having been the object of anyone’s affection in anything until now,” Porter continued. “I had my first romantic kiss in anything ever in my life last season in episode eight. To be 50 on Sept. 21 and having a very loving, connected sex scene is sort of blowing my mind. My nerves are frayed and I’m gonna take a valium and watch it tonight.”
‘Mayans M.C.’ rides again
For season two of FX’s “Mayans M.C.” (10 p.m. Sept. 3, FX), viewers who come to it hoping for more connective tissue to predecessor series “Sons of Anarchy” won’t be disappointed, at least at first.
Executive producer Kurt Sutter described it as a “transitional process” to go from the established sevenyear mythology of “Sons” to building out the “Mayans” world.
“[We’re] doing it in a way that never undermined where we left off on ‘Sons,’” he said. “I want people to have their own point of view about what happened to the club after that final scene; I want that to live in their own imaginations.”
He tried to make choices that wouldn’t impact that ending, noting, “As we button up some of the connections between both worlds and both mythologies, that will continue to fade into the background in terms of the connection to ‘Sons’ and allow ‘Mayans’ to become its own thing,” he said.
Like “Sons,” “Mayans” is set in a world that’s frequently violent, which takes on a new resonance with every mass shooting in the real world.
“It’s not gratuitous, it’s not pretty, and there are always ramifications,” Sutter said of violence in the show. “Those are the standards I hold myself to in portraying violence, from the time of writing on ‘The Shield’ to ‘Mayans.’ … Whether in the story or in life, violence shatters humanity. It’s my job to put that into story.”
Kept/rebooted
FX already ordered a third season of Donald Glover comedy “Atlanta” last year, and now the network has ordered a fourth season. Both eight-episode seasons begin production next year.
FX also renewed “Snowfall” for a fourth season.
Netflix will adapt a liveaction series from “The Baby-Sitters Club” starring Alicia Silverstone and Mark Feuerstein.
“E! News,” which currently airs at 7 p.m. on cable’s E! channel, will be rebooted as a morning show, airing at 7 a.m. weekdays beginning sometime in 2020.