Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
MerrilyWePostAlong
Swing Joined: 1/27/25
#1Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:05pmhttps://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.
Owen22
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/24/11
#2Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:09pmMerrilyWePostAlong 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...
BorisTomashevsky
Broadway Star Joined: 4/30/22
#3Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:19pmHe’s flat as a pancake and poor John Kander has to endure hearing all those “improvements” to the score.
Clock the white interviewer looking down while Billy rambles after the “replaced the Jews” statement lol.
I’m surprised the production didn’t try to get the interview scrubbed from the clip.
#4Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:26pmHow this moron hasn’t been canceled yet is beyond me.
#5Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:52pmDidn’t Whoopi say something in a similar vein that got her suspended from THE VIEW for two weeks a few years back?
Billy is kind of becoming like Ben Platt to me. They are talented and deserve their flowers, but their inflated sense of self and tendency to run their mouths makes it really hard to want to support him.
I’m not someone who wants anyone to just “shut up and perform”, but I think he could stand to think before he speaks. He’s not in a position anymore where he could survive being cancelled and have a stack of cash to fall back on.
#6Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:53pmHow did he go from the toast of Broadway ( Kinky Boots ) to this!
JSquared2
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/23/17
#7Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:53pmWell in London, he called out more often than he went on -- hopefully we'll get lucky and he'll do the same here. He's just an awful person.
#8Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:58pmI watched the whole thing to get the context and... it doesn't really help. A truly bizarre statement.
BWAY Baby2
Broadway Star Joined: 11/10/14
#9Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 5:59pmAnti semitic- this is a ridiculous statement- and clearly shows his ignorance of the history of the Jewish people.
#10Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 6:08pmI will say though that his outfit and wig reminded me of how much I loved him as the mother in PURPOSE.
KrupYou
Chorus Member Joined: 7/5/25
Cape Twirl of Doom
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/2/05
#12Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 6:45pmHow have "Black replaced the Jews" when none of the Black characters in this production are Jewish? Herr Schultz is Jewish and he's white. Sally isn't Jewish. Cliff isn't Jewish. The emcee isn't Jewish.
#13Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 7:30pmCan someone attempt to explain what he meant by this?
ElephantLoveMedley
Broadway Star Joined: 10/14/21
#14Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 7:35pmI 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.
#15Billy Porter: "Blacks Have Replaced The Jews"
Posted: 7/21/25 at 7:50pmI just find it so funny he said this TO Tony Dokoupil, especially after that repulsive interview he did with Ta-Nehisi Coates.
#16Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 7:50pmTotallyEffed 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.
#17Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 8:32pmWas contemplating making a return to the production. This, and his, shall we say, idiosyncratic delivery, make it a hard pass. Would rather take my chances with Gypsy again.
#18Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 9:30pmYeah, i won't be returning to the August Wilson. Disgusting comment.
#19Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 10:23pmThe full clip doesn't help it at all. I think it's so stupid to be offensive.
"Hey little girls, look at all the men in shiny shirts and no wives!" - Jackie Hoffman, Xanadu, 19 Feb 2008
PipingHotPiccolo
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/13/22
#20Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 10:58pmi 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.
starlightexpress2
Chorus Member Joined: 4/3/24
#21Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 11:10pmWhat a depressing end to this production. I genuinely hope they replace him with someone else.
#22Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/21/25 at 11:35pmWatching 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.
#23Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/22/25 at 12:06amThe Distinctive Baritone said: "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."
His idea for who The Emcee is is honestly... horrifying given this particular production...
#24Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/22/25 at 12:39amGYPSY, 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.
BorisTomashevsky
Broadway Star Joined: 4/30/22
#25Billy Porter:
Posted: 7/22/25 at 12:50amMichelleCraig said: "I also think Billy Porter has been, unsuccessfully, trying to stretch his deserved 15 minutes into a career. One deservedly earned career moment doesnot 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.
"
Do you mean his Kinky Boots fame? He’s had a very respectable career since the late 90s at the very least. Kinky Boots may have been the pinnacle of it, but he was career-successful even before that. I don’t really like his voice now, and his brand is fatiguing, but on the It’s Only Life album from the early 2000s he’s at his best.
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