Billy Porter was 'hurt' after being snubbed for a role in The Wiz

29 November 2021

Billy Porter was “hurt” after not being asked to play a role in ‘The Wiz Live’.

Billy Porter was left hurt after not being asked to star in The Wiz Live

The ‘Pose’ star was snubbed by casting directors for a part in the live television production of the Broadway musical – which is an all-black retelling of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ – despite having won awards for his role in ‘Kinky Boots.’

He said: “They did bring ‘The Wiz back’. They put it on television. They did it on television. And now I can say this too, because it hurt my feelings. Without me. They did it on television without me. After I had won the Tony and the Grammy. Yeah, those mother***ers did it without me.”

However, the actor went on to explain that fate intervened when he was cast as the Fairy Godmother in the Amazon film ‘Cinderella’ alongside popstar Camila Cabello - a role that had previously been played by his idol Whitney Houston.

Speaking on the ‘Table Manners’ podcast, he told Jessie and Lennie Ware: “The truth of it is with as hurt as my feelings were, fast forward to ‘Cinderella’, fast forward to playing the Fairy Godmother. Fast forward to being a 14-year-old child and wanting to be the male Whitney Houston and getting a call asking me to be the fairy godmother? Like it's like, oh, that's why I wasn't in the Wiz. Yes, this was supposed to be on the new thing. It's specific. I'm not just supposed to be going back and doing something that somebody else already did for the last 50 years.”

The star now revels in the idea of creating new projects and spoke of how he now has a self-penned television show in the works.

He added: “I'm creating new s***. And so I'm just trying to stay in that mindset. You know, I sold a television show, you know, that I wrote and created with my writing partner called ‘Fruits of our Labour’. We sold it to Warner Brothers and Peacock. It's about a black showbiz dynasty family in New York City, and it's like, interestingly enough, in 2021, we've never seen it. We've never seen the representation."