It’s warm, welcoming and, as made manifest in the green paint (Benjamin Moore’s “ jalapeño pepper”) that covers the walls of the foyer and home office, sassy.Ĭertain themes repeat themselves throughout. The result is a space that utterly reflects its inhabitant. “I’d been thinking about this for years and I knew exactly what I wanted.” Porter, who went to the first meeting with his interior designer, Marc Blackwell, carrying a three-ring binder that bulged with ideas scribbled on scraps of paper and pages clipped from shelter magazines. “I’m a Virgo and I’m very creative,” said Mr. Porter, who is also a writer and director. “I’m not going to say that what I went through wasn’t difficult and debilitating,” added Mr. Porter, 45, whose credits include Broadway productions of “Miss Saigon,” “Grease” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” and “Angels in America” Off Broadway, but who went through years of unemployment in part because of his distaste for being pigeonholed “as a man who sings like Jennifer Hudson.”
“I knew I would have a place again because I’d had one before, and I know life has ups and life has downs,” said Mr. For the first time in a long time he has an apartment to call his own, a two-bedroom rental in a new building in Harlem, to say nothing of the wherewithal to cover his monthly obligations. I actually had to file for bankruptcy in 2007,” he said.īut just as his “Kinky Boots” character Lola, a drag queen, saves a struggling shoe manufacturer, “Kinky Boots” has saved Mr. Porter, the Tony-winning star of the musical “Kinky Boots” carted his chair and chattel from sublet to sublet, from couch to couch, from coast to coast. For 13 years Billy Porter was a man without a home but a man with plenty of baggage: three suitcases, 26 boxes and a chaise longue.