Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the who is best known for his work as Drag Queen Lola in Harvey Firestein and

Cindy Lopper's Broadway blockbuster Kinky Boots for which he won a best actor in a

musical Tony in 2013 and a

house musical theater album, Grammy in 2014. And as House Ball MC Pray Tell on Ryan Murphy's Landmark

and acclaimed FX drama series Poz,

for which he was nominated for Best Actor in a Drama Series Golden Globe

and Critics Choice Awards in 2018 and will almost certainly be nominated in the same category

at the Emmys in 2019, the incomparable Billy Porter.

Over the course of our conversation at the offices of the Hollywood reporter, the 49 year old

and I discussed how he was impacted by a terribly dark childhood, how in the early 1990s he first broke

into and then for complicated reasons fell out of the Broadway scene, why despite 13 subsequent years of struggle, including at times homelessness, bankruptcy, and despair, he remained committed to the arts.

How, against all odds, Kinky Boots brought him in from the cold and pose allowed him to realize his lifelong ambitions

Plus much more so without further ado let's go to that conversation. Billy, thank you so much for joining us, appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Of course, of course.

We always begin with just a few basics.

Where were you born and raised and what did your folks do for a living?

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My mother was disabled so she did not work and my father was a security guard. My father and my stepfather were

both security grounds actually, yes. So I've read a lot of other

interviews and

profiles and things in preparation it sounds like you first started singing at a very early age in a way though that probably many people do in church that was the beginning?

Yes I grew up in the Baptist in the Pentec Baptist and the Pentecostal Church and I started

...