Billy Porter has opened up about the financial impact of the Hollywood strikes, revealing he has had to sell his house.
The 53-year-old award-winning singer and actor has been working in the entertainment industry since the late 1980s. He received mainstream attention for his role as ballroom announcer Pray Tell in the series Pose from 2018 to 2021.
In May this year, film and TV writers began striking over calls for increased funding and job security, bigger writers’ rooms and the use of artificial intelligence in the writing process to be limited.
Last month, the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joined the strike to demand better pay. This marks the first time that screen actors and writers have simultaneously withheld labour in 60 years, leading to the effective shutdown of Hollywood as actors are not allowed to work during the strike.
Porter has now spoken about the protests while in London, where he addressed controversial comments made by Disney CEO Bob Iger, who told press that the actors’ expectations of treatment are ‘just not realistic’.
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Meanwhile, other reports of an unnamed Hollywood executive admitted that ‘the endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses’.
Responding to the remarks made by the Disney boss, Porter told the Evening Standard: “To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 (£61,000) a day?
“I don’t have any words for it, but: f*** you. That’s not useful, so I’ve kept my mouth shut. I haven’t engaged because I’m so enraged. I’m glad I’ve been over here. But when I go back I will join the picket lines.”
The Tony Award-winning actor said that with no end in sight for the strikes, he has been forced to make a major life change by selling his house.
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Several projects that Porter was meant to work on have been stalled or cancelled due to the Hollywood shutdown.
“And I don’t know when we’re gonna go back [to work],” he continued. “The life of an artist, until you make f***-you money — which I haven’t made yet — is still cheque-to-cheque. I was supposed to be in a new movie, and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening.
“So to the person who said, ‘We’re going to starve them out until they have to sell their apartments’, you’ve already starved me out.”
It's been a tough few months for Porter, as in July he announced that he was separating from his husband, Adam Smith, after six years of marriage.
Topics: Film and TV, Celebrity