Nearly four years after his history-making Emmy win, Billy Porter will play a pioneering figure in the black queer community.
According to The Hollywood Reporter , the “Pose” actor will play author and civil rights activist James Baldwin in an upcoming biopic. The film will be an adaptation of David Leeming’s 1994 book James Baldwin: A Biography, with a screenplay by Porter and Dan McCabe.
“As the strangest black man on this planet with relative consciousness, I find myself, as James Baldwin said, ‘angry all the time.’ I am because James was,” Porter told Variety in a statement Wednesday. “I stand on the shoulders of James Baldwin and intend to extend his legacy for generations to come.”
A native of New York, Baldwin rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s with impassioned essays that touched on racial discrimination, sexuality, and masculinity. He died in 1987 at the age of 63.
Nowadays, he is best remembered for his period-defining novels Notes of a Native Son, Go Tell It on the Mountain and If Beale Street Could Talk, which was adapted by Barry Jenkins into an Oscar-winning film. in 2018.
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Porter has often described Baldwin as a personal hero, even mentioning him in his speech at the 2019 Emmy Awards. Like Baldwin, he has built a name for himself through art that unapologetically reflects his true self.
If the new film is successful, it could catapult Porter into the esteemed ranks of EGOT winners, earning him an Oscar. In addition to her Emmy win for “Pose,” she received a Tony Award in 2013 for her portrayal of Queen Lola in Broadway’s “Kinky Boots.” The cast album of the musical won him a Grammy that same year.
These days, Porter is busier than ever. Earlier this year, he appeared in the big screen comedy 80 For Brady alongside Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Lily Tomlin. She is also working on a new album, “Black Mona Lisa,” due out this summer.
“I’m so grateful to have lived long enough to see the day when my weirdness, which I was told would be my responsibility by allies and haters alike, and had been my responsibility for decades, and now this weirdness is my superpower. he told Out magazine last month. “No glass ceiling, no restrictions.”
