Billy Porter makes Emmy Awards history
Sunday evening, Billy Porter won the Emmy for the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series award, making history as the first openly gay black man to do so.
The win came as a result his work on FX’s Pose series, beating out formidable competition found in Jason Bateman Ozark, This Is Us darling Sterling K. Brown, Kit Harington from Game Thrones, Better Call Saul‘s Bob Odenkirk, and Milo Ventimiglia This Is Us.
Upon gracing the stage, Porter declared that he had won in the “category love,” using his speech to add, “We as artists are the people that get to change the molecular structure the hearts and minds the people who live on this planet. Please don’t ever stop doing that. Please don’t ever stop telling the truth.”
While he previously earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role, this was Porter’s first Emmy nomination. Impressively, the new award now leaves Porter with a potential Oscar win to achieve EGOT status. He has already laid claim to a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, both for his Kinky Boots performance.