Billy Porter has been a force in Hollywood for over two decades. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2013, and became the first gay black man to be nominated for (and win) the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. Shockingly, he’s also been forced to sell his home because he isn’t making enough money.
To add insult to injury, such a development is exactly what the AMPTP is banking on. Porter’s announcement serves as a sad realization of a comment that was made last month. An anonymous studio executive shared that “the endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” There was an attempt to smooth over this thought process by calling it a “necessary evil,” but the fact remains that people’s lives are being irrevocably damaged in the meantime.
Porter shocked fans when he revealed that the actor’s strike has led to him losing out on several high-profile (and high paying) roles. “I have to sell my house… Because we’re on strike,” he told the outlet. “And I don’t know when we’re gonna go back [to work]. The life of an artist, until you make f***-you money — which I haven’t made yet — is still cheque-to-cheque.”
Porter went on to list out the projects that he was forced to turn down when he decided to stand in solidarity with the rest of the Screen Actors Guild. “I was supposed to be in a new movie and on a new television show starting in September,” he revealed. “None of that is happening.”
The actor also had strong words for Disney CEO Bob Iger, who previously dismissed the list of demands from the Screen Actors Guild as “unrealistic.” Porter criticized Iger for being out of touch, especially when money is not a factor that the CEO has to take into consideration. “To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 a day? I don’t have any words for it, but: f*** you,” he stated.
This is not the first time that Porter has been openly critical of the entertainment world. The actor criticized Harry Styles for wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue Magazine, telling The Sunday Times that the pop star was merely doing it for attention. “He doesn’t care, he’s just doing it because it’s the thing to do,” he opined. This is politics for me. This is my life.” Porter later retracted his criticism and apologized to Styles.
It doesn’t appear as though any apology is coming to Iger, however. The Disney CEO has ruffled lots of feathers with his comments regarding the strike and the fact that it’s “disturbing” Hollywood’s attempt to re-establish itself after the COVID pandemic. The comments were ridiculed by everyone on the other side, including Screen Actors Guild President Fran Drescher, who called Iger “tone-deaf” and an “ignoramus” during a protest speech.