Billy Porter embraces directing on the trans teen story Anything's Possible

In 2019, Billy Porter made history as the first gay black man to be nominated and to win a lead acting award at the Primetime Emmys, for his unforgettable role as Pray Tell on the series Pose. In 2020, Time magazine chose him for its list of the 100 most influential people. And earlier this year Porter won his second Tony Award, for producing, after earning his first in 2013 for acting.

For his next challenge, the endlessly talented Porter makes his directorial debut with Anything’s Possible, a comedy about Kelsa (Eva Reign), a black trans teen navigating her senior year of high school while embarking on a romantic relationship with her Muslim classmate Khal (Abubakhar Ali).

Porter, whose work on Pose helped set a new standard for representation on screen, spoke to The A.V. Club about the challenges of exploring Kelsa’s life and love on screen. In addition to talking about the coming-of-age films that inspired him—which he notably observes did not feature characters like him—Porter discussed the modern teen realities he had to learn about in order to portray them sensitively in Anything’s Possible. And he revealed his regret about removing a subplot from the film that has taken on new relevance in the light of recent news.

Billy Porter: Truth, authenticity, joy, the celebration of transness, and love.

AVC: What films did you draw on for inspiration for the look and the tone of the film?

BP: Well, I spoke very often of the John Hughes coming-of-age genre of the ’80s. That was my era. And I was very drawn to those movies while consciously understanding that I was not in them. There was no representation of me being in them. They were not speaking directly to me. I had to superimpose myself and my life onto the characters that I most related to. And so when I read this script, I was really moved by the fact that our screenwriter, Ximena, had captured this magical space and included the human beings that reflected what the actual world looks like.

AVC: Was there anything that Kelsa had to deal with that was difficult for you to understand as an adult?

BP: Yeah, but it wasn’t Kelsa. It was actually about Abubakr Ali’s character, who ends up not going to traditional college. That was a conversation that I had to have with Ximena, who’s a young person, and other young people who quite frankly don’t want the bill. So they want to find trade jobs now. They’re not interested in going into debt by going to college. That’s not something that was an option for my generation, and especially a black man who’s first generation post-civil rights movement, a four-year college was the only option. So that was an interesting conversation to have for me.

There was also a storyline for Chris, the crazy white girl. She had a whole boyfriend, pregnancy, abortion storyline—which after what has happened, I wish I had fought to keep it in. But there was a connection that I was making from her wild and wacky behavior. And you don’t get to see it in the movie because it’s not there anymore. But there’s only one sort of erratic moment that you see and it’s with her with the paintballs on the house. And I was like, oh, well, the fact that she had to go and get an abortion on her own and her boyfriend didn’t show up for her, and they broke up and he went radio silent, all of those things are justification for her behavior. And what I got from my editor actually, who’s a female 25-year-old, she’s like, oh, we don’t need that justification. We are who we are and we act like we want to act. It doesn’t have to be connected to some sort of trauma for us to act that way. And that was enlightening for me.

AVC: Kelsa tells the camera directly what she goes through as a teenager. How did you figure out the challenges she explicitly faced, and the ways to portray them dramatically in the story?

BP: Well, that’s the screenwriter. We really worked very intentionally with the screenwriter to make sure that we show the conflict in her life and not just talk about it. But what’s interesting about the internet and social media is that there is an element where you actually do just talk about it, direct address to the screen. So it was actually useful for us—that space was useful for us because it’s a natural space for how these kids communicate with each other now. So it actually was very useful.

AVC: This subject matter requires such a light touch to navigate the obstacles that teens face in terms of potential social stigma and romantic relationships. What was the toughest thing to portray, since the tone of the film is ultimately very celebratory and upbeat?

BP: The toughest thing to portray was the actual physical connection, the physical sexual connection. That’s a really difficult conversation. I feel like it’s nobody’s business but the people who are involved. And yet as a queer person, as a black gay person, the first thing that people go to is the sex. The first thing that people go to is my bedroom. My bedroom is none of your business. Stay out of my bedroom and you’ll be fine. So the hardest part in this was the balance of how do we sort of give a nod to that kind of relationship without actually doing it. Because I didn’t want to distract from the other magical things that are happening. With this script and the film and the dialogue that we get to create and the space that we get to create, I didn’t want to distract from that.