Uzo Aduba & Billy Porter Talk Marginalization in Hollywood During Their Actors on Actors Interview

Uzo Aduba and Billy Porter are getting candid about their careers.

The 40-year-old In Treatment actress spoke with the Pose star about representation in media for the latest installment of Variety‘s Actors on Actors series on Thursday (June 17).

Click inside to read more…

Billy recalled his first time seeing Uzo perform on-stage in the musical Venice and opened up about feeling marginalized within the theater community.

“It was Angels in America in 1994,” the actor said. “I took myself to see it, by myself. I’d heard too much about it. I was sitting there, and I just wept the whole time, looking at Jeffrey Wright play the character of Belize. No shade — he was fabulous. But a straight Black man.”

He added, “Playing the one part that I could get. Because no one respected me as an actor enough to be straight. I was marginalized for my queerness. So I watched this play, and it was the first time that I had ever seen a real representation of me reflected back at me. A Black queer man.”

“I one-thousand percent know that feeling,” Uzo replied. “You were 24 years old, your third Broadway show, Carnegie Mellon trained. I studied classical voice — knowing where your voice naturally sits, but never getting the opportunity to ever sing, because what comes from your body, the package from which it comes, was not yet understood. It wasn’t computing — fine. But you love this thing that you do so much. For me, the job is not to try to find a space for myself within the thing. I’m carving out my own space.”

Billy also reflected on his work on Pose, which is coming to an end this year after three seasons.

“I started asking for it in ’94,” he said. “It came about four years ago. The crossover success. The journey was long. It don’t always come when you want it to, but it’s right on time. When I witness what’s going on in the world, I see the platform that I have now because of Pose. I understand how to use it.”

A showrunner from Pose recently opened up about why the series is set to end after season 3.