Billy Porter Says 'I Have To Sell My House' Due To SAG Strike, Curses Out Disney CEO Bob Iger: 'I'm So Enraged'

The SAG-AFTRA strike is already putting a squeeze on actors' finances — even for an Emmy winner.

Billy Porter, who shot to fame and won an Emmy on the FX drama Pose, now says he has to sell his house due to the financial strain of the strike. "I have to sell my house," he tells the UK's Evening Standard, "because we're on strike." For an artist like Porter, "until you make f–k-you money — which I haven't made yet," life is still paycheck-to-paycheck, he says. "I was supposed to be in a new movie, and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening."

Porter also took a shot at the anonymous Hollywood executive who told Deadline that the goal was to drag out the strike until writers and actors were forced to sell their homes: "So to the person who said, 'We're going to starve them out until they have to sell their apartments'? You've already starved me out." (The WGA went out on strike in May, with SAG-AFTRA joining them on the picket lines last month.)

But Porter reserved his greatest ire for Disney CEO Bob Iger — who technically oversees FX, among Disney's many media holdings — for Iger's recent comments saying the demands of striking writers and actors were "unrealistic." "To hear Bob Iger say that our demands for a living wage are unrealistic? While he makes $78,000 a day?" Porter marveled. "I don't have any words for it, but: F–k you. That's not useful, so I've kept my mouth shut. I haven't engaged because I'm so enraged." He added that, while he's currently in London co-producing a musical, he "will join the picket lines" when he returns home.

Porter started out in theater, winning a Tony in 2013 for his role in the musical Kinky Boots. Pose debuted in 2017, with Porter playing flamboyant ball emcee Pray Tell, a role that won him the Emmy for best lead actor in a drama in 2019. HIs other TV roles include American Horror Story, The Twilight Zone and The Simpsons.