Billy Porter to Play Civil Rights Icon James Baldwin in Biopic

Pose star Billy Porter will be playing the Black, queer civil rights icon James Baldwin in an upcoming biopic, Variety reports. In addition to playing the starring role, Porter will also be writing the movie along with Dan McCabe. They’ll be adapting their screenplay from the 1994 book James Baldwin: A Biography by Baldwin’s friend and assistant David Leeming. “As a Black, queer man on this planet with relative consciousness I find myself, like James Baldwin said, ‘in a rage all the time,’” says Porter about the opportunity to play the queer legend. “I am because James was. I stand on James Baldwin’s shoulders, and I intend to expand his legacy for generations to come.” Porter has called this a career-long goal to play Baldwin.

According to his PBS biography, James Baldwin was the grandson of a slave and was born in Harlem in 1924 as the eldest of nine children. He became a preacher in his early life, but later, he later left to become a writer and wrote such renowned works as Go Tell It On the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, Giovanni’s Room, and Another Country.

In Porter’s first interview after the announcement on the Tamron Hall Show, Porter goes on to explain why he wanted to bring this story to the world. “He’s one of the first people who I saw who looked like me, who represented me in the fullness, Black, and queer, and present… unapologetic.” He also mentions in the interview that he had been trying to pitch something else to Byron Allen, but when he mentioned he wanted to work on a piece about James Baldwin, Allen said he didn’t want to pick up what Porter was pitching, but he’d rather have him do the Baldwin picture.

In the same interview, Hall brought up internet criticisms of Porter’s announcement and all the people who suggested that the actor can’t pull off such a big role. Porter fired back at those criticisms. “The Internet has created a space where it’s made people think that their opinion matters, at all,” he explained. “It doesn’t. I am 53 years old, and I’ve dedicated my life to my art and my craft. Question me at your own peril.”