Actor Billy Porter to Sell His House Amid Writer and Actor Strike

Actor Billy Porter has revealed that due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, it’s been a major weight on his finances. Porter told the Evening Standard that he has to put his house up for sale. 

In various corners of Hollywood and across the nation, numerous actors and entertainers are engaged in a strike alongside the Writers Guild of America (WGA). This strike stems from their call for improved compensation and residuals in the age of streaming, and the rise of artificial intelligence.

Although these strikes might eventually yield favorable results, Porter is among many who are dealing with the negative consequences of it in the present. 

Porter played Pray Tell in Pose, while the show was airing from 2018 to 2021. While the show went off air, he said that he had multiple upcoming projects in the works scheduled for September, however, as a result of the strike, they have been tabled for the time being. 

The Pose star told the Evening Standard, “I have to sell my house. I don’t know when we’re gonna go back [to work]. The life of an artist, until you make f–k-you money, which I haven’t made yet, is still check-to-check.”

He continued by saying, “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.”

Porter’s comments were directed at a July article from Deadline, which quoted a Hollywood executive saying that the studios would refrain from resuming negotiations with the WGA until its members went broke. Additionally, he criticized Disney CEO Bob Iger for his comments in an interview at the Sun Valley Conference, where he deemed the demands of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikers as unrealistic. 

“The business has evolved. So the contract has to evolve and change, period. To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 a day?”

Porter said in the interview that he hasn’t been engaged in the strike because he’s enraged by the circumstances. He’s been overseas in England but will join his fellow actors on the front lines upon his return.