Billy Porter: From Kinky Boots to Top of the Pops?
“I feel like the Internet and social media have created a world where theater can transcend New York, and get out in a way that it couldn’t when I first started,” Broadway performer Billy Porter tells Metro Weekly. “You can just get online and you can talk to people all the way across the world who have the same interests in theater and connect in that way.”
Porter is certainly connecting: Everyone from Katy Perry to this critic have showered Porter with praise for his starring role in Kinky Boots, which also earned him his first Tony nomination — and secured him a Drama Desk Award this past Sunday. Porter’s hoping to parlay the success — and tap into that new market the Internet and social media has opened up — to revive a pop music career that included a self-titled album on A&M Records in the ‘90s. In due time, anyway. For the time being, as he explained in a cover feature in Metro Weekly’s Special Broadway Edition, Porter is understandably focused on simply savoring his high-heeled moment in the limelight.
As for other aspirations, Porter mentions finding a husband. And maybe a pet.
“You know, I would love a dog,” he says. “But on an eight-show-a-week schedule, which is what I basically make my living doing, and living in New York City, it’s just not fair to the dog. I see it happen all the time, and I just think, wow, that dog sits at home, by him or herself, 95 percent of the time. And I just couldn’t do that.”
So instead of pet play and neglect, Porter, in his rare time off, likes to cook and hit the beach. “I’m a beach bum, a sun bunny,” he says, adding with a laugh: “So in the summertime I like to be out in the sun. And work on my tan.”
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