It’s been a minute since Billy Porter has been in the headlines, but now he’s back and sharing a scary health incident that left him “dead for three days.” And trust us when we say, the details are harrowing.
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If you’ll remember, in September 2025, we told you that the “Pose” star suffered “a serious case of sepsis” that caused him to pull out of scheduled performances in the Broadway show “Cabaret.” At the time, the production team announced in a post to social media that Porter’s doctors were “confident that he will make a full recovery,” but “advised him to maintain a restful schedule.”
Now, Porter is opening up about his experience with sepsis and breaking down just how shockingly serious things got. Sitting down for a new interview on TS Madison’s iHeartRadio podcast “Outlaws,” the actor shared that it all went down after he went to the doctor’s office for a “routine check-up.” While there, doctors discovered that he had a kidney stone “trapped in [his] urethra.”
“When they got in there, there was so much pus, and bile, and infection behind the stone. It bubbled up, and I went uroseptic in minutes,” Porter explained. Uroseptic is described as “sepsis caused by infections of the urinary tract, including cystitis, or lower urinary tract and bladder infections, and pyelonephritis, or upper urinary tract and kidney infections,” according to the National Library of Medicine.
Porter went on to say that the infection then got so severe, he ended up going on a life support machine to keep him breathing while the disease ran through his system.
“I was dead for three days. I am a miracle. I’m a walking miracle,” he said.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Porter then shared that after he got off life support, his doctors told him that his leg had gone into “compartment syndrome, which is when the muscles close in on themselves and cut off the oxygen.” As a result, they had to cut his leg open from his hip to his knee so that they could fix that issue.
“They had to cut me open on either side of my leg while I was in a coma, and from my knee to my hip, and leave it open for two days, so they could save my leg,” he said.
Now that he’s on the other side, Porter said he has a new outlook on life that’s made him even more grateful and reflective.
“As I sat in my hospital bed, reflecting, there were a couple of things I heard. The first thing I heard was: Work smarter, not harder. The second thing I heard was: Be obedient and answer the call. And the third thing I heard was: Don’t you ever stop telling the truth again. I unconsciously silenced myself for fear that I wouldn’t be on the A-list anymore,” he explained.
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