Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"

MerrilyWePostAlong said: "https://x.com/itsrainingben/status/1947381790986887314

Full clip:https://youtu.be/yn188zhkjh0

Wondering how others are feeling - this feels like a strange thing to say given the rise in antisemitism and reductive of a broader issue, to put it mildly. I'm sure the show did not appreciate the comment."

Well, if anything, you are correct in labeling it a reductive statement.  Embarrassingly reductive...

How did he go from the toast of Broadway  ( Kinky Boots ) to this! 

I watched the whole thing to get the context and... it doesn't really help. A truly bizarre statement. 

I know at least two separate people who found these comments so repulsive that they are no longer planning to return to the show before closing.

Great work, Billy.

TotallyEffed said: "Can someone attemptto explain what he meant by this?"

I mean, from the context, the only thing that even remotely makes sense to me is that he is suggesting that Black people today are as persecuted as the Jews were in Nazi Germany.

But even that doesn't really make sense when coupled with what he was saying about Cabaret. The Emcee and certainly not Sally are hardly resisting the Nazis. 
 

After sitting through his revisal of The Life, it’s pretty clear social and political commentary is not his strength. 

Updated On: 7/21/25 at 07:50 PM

Yeah, i won't be returning to the August Wilson. Disgusting comment.

i have no idea what he was trying to say, and i surely agree this was a dumb comment--comparing persecutions/mistreatment is ALWAYS a mine field. Whoopi Goldberg recently said that being a woman in Iran is comparable to being Black in America-- an objectively ignorant comment and an example of the same trap, comparing persecutions. 

STILL i think its worth noting that Billy Porter has a long standing relationship with the Jewish community, recently took the time to take photographs with Holocaust survivors, and has been a positive force in Black/Jewish relations. Which makes this even MORE confounding, if anything.

Watching the whole clip where he also reveals his nonsensical “backstory” for his version of the Emcee as an American fleeing the Jim Crow South of the 1930s leads me to believe that he really has no actual “take” on the character - at least not one that is based on the text or the much documented history of how Hal Prince came up with that character and why. As a result, he is unable to answer the interviewers’ questions with any clarity or depth, and his statement about Jews is just him trying and failing to come up with something meaningful to say. 

GYPSY, since its inception in 1959, has always been called a fable…even though it’s loosely based on real people. Being recognized as an American fable, the current casting of this most recent Broadway revival, with the justified Tony-laden Audra McDonald, can possibly be faulted for casting a lead who had not been known as someone with the vocal chops to accurately handle the score as written. Got it.

CABARET is not anyone’s fable. It is based on an historical period in time that cumulatively lead to the most horrendous war of the 20th Century. Millions upon millions were killed, including the acknowledged 6 million Jews. This is not a show to stunt-cast with a Billy Porter…or even a Francis Jue. A fable is malleable, history, to a point, really is not. Surely we’ve seen HAMILTON and 1776 produced and revived with casting including many races and genders. I get it and got it. While there were reasons these last two aforementioned examples were cast as they were, I could understand HAMILTON, but I thought 1776 was a hoped-for money grab and I’m glad it failed.

I think casting Billy Porter in CABARET was a total misfire. I also think Billy Porter has been, unsuccessfully, trying to stretch his deserved 15 minutes into a career. One deservedly earned career moment does not a legend make. Hopefully, Porter will come into a unique, individual role he can make his own again. CABARET, and everything surrounding it, was not Porter’s opportunity for this.