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Billy Porter Declared Winner of Hollywood’s Golden Globe Parties

“I’m black, I’m turning 50, and I’m fierce!”

Category is: Awards Season Fantasy.

Pose star Billy Porter, celebrating his Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Drama Series, has been "the center of attention" at every pre-Globes party this weekend, the New York Times reports.

Major stars like Bradley Cooper, Nicole Kidman, and Viola Davis “were reduced to mere satellites whenever Billy Porter showed up," Kyle Buchanan writes, "swanning through each crowd in a new wrap dress and cackling with evident pleasure."

While most gentlemen wore suits at W Magazine’s Chateau Marmont party, Porter slayed in "a black dress with peekaboo cutouts and a wide-brimmed Gucci hat that was half-cowboy, half-coven."

Porter also reportedly turned heads in a goldenrod gown at the American Film Institute luncheon, where "no other dress in the room received quite as many compliments."

Steve Granitz/WireImage

LOS ANGELES, CA - JANUARY 04: Billy Porter attends the 19th Annual AFI Awards at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on January 4, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)

“I’m black, I’m turning 50, and I’m fierce!” Porter tells the Times. “I’m grown, and I’m going to wear my dresses.”

The Tony- and Grammy-winning Kinky Boots star says, however, that some fashion houses have denied his requests for traditionally female garments, responding, "'We don’t think you should be wearing that.’”

“I represent something different," Porter continues. "I represent a new voice. I represent a challenge to the status quo.”

“One of the things I’ve realized is that I’ve always had a genderfluid sensibility with clothes, and it was so squashed by homophobia,” explains the actor, who reclaimed his femininity through Kinky Boots and Pose. “I hope that through what I’m doing, it can reach a younger generation, especially the little black boys. It’s different for us.”

Focusing on gay and trans performers in New York City's 1980s ballroom scene, Pose has made history with the most trans series regulars ever in an American scripted TV series. The production has also employed more than 100 trans actors, crew members, and consultants, including Janet Mock and Our Lady J.

Porter, who plays HIV-positive ball emcee Pray Tell in the show, says he hopes he wins the Golden Globe: “I’m the black gay guy, I’m the poster child now. People need to see what that looks like.”

Porter recently slammed comedian Kevin Hart, who stepped down from hosting the Oscars amid backlash surrounding his homophobic history, in a Consequence of Sound interview: “You want people to stop shooting your children in the back? But yet still, you turn around and oppress other people the same way you’re being oppressed. Fuck that. Fuck you. We’re done.”

Ryan Murphy, who created Pose in collaboration with producers Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals, has committed to donating 100% of his profits from the groundbreaking FX series to various LGBTQ charities.

Pose has been renewed for a second season and will return later this year.

The 76th annual Golden Globe Awards air tonight on NBC.

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