Pose star Billy Porter cast as James Baldwin in upcoming biopic
Billy Porter is set to play James Baldwin in a film based on the trailblazing novelist and activist. The Pose star will also write the script for the forthcoming biopic with Dan McCabe for Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group Motion Pictures.
It will be based on James Baldwin: A Biography, the 1994 book from David Leeming, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Connecticut who was also a close friend and assistant to Baldwin for over 25 years.
Widely regarded as one of the best writers of all time, Baldwin often explored themes of masculinity, sexuality, race and class alongside social and political change such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement.
His protagonists were primarily gay and bisexual African-American men. Baldwin’s most acclaimed and best-known works include Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room and If Beale Street Could Talk, the latter of which was adapted into the 2018 Oscar-winning film of the same name.
