Billy Porter: I Have to Sell My House Because of Strike

The Hollywood strikes have literally hit home for actor Billy Porter, who says he has to sell his house because of the ongoing actors' strike. In a recent interview with London's Evening Standard, the Pose star said he plans to join the picket lines when he gets back to the US. He said he has to sell his house because he doesn't know when he will be working again. "The life of an artist, until you make f--- you money—which I haven't made yet—is still check-to-check," he said. "I was supposed to be in a new movie, and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening."

"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," he said. He was referring to a Deadline article last month that quoted a studio exec as saying the "endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses," the Guardian notes. In the interview, Porter said streaming has upended the decades-old system in which artists were compensated fairly with residual payments. "The streaming companies are notoriously opaque with their viewership figures," he said. "The business has evolved. So the contract has to evolve."

Porter slammed Disney CEO Bob Iger for his remarks on the strike. "To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 a day?" he said. The Writers Guild of America strike began on May 2 and reached the 100-day mark Wednesday, matching the length of the 2007-08 strike, the AP reports. Actors in the SAG-AFTRA union went on strike July 14. This is the first time Hollywood writers and actors have been on strike at the same time since 1960. (More actors strike stories.)