Billy Porter is getting candid about just how brutal his battle with sepsis was.
The Tony and Emmy winner made a recent appearance on TS Madison’s Outlaws podcast, where he shared that the infection got so serious that he ended up in a coma that left him “dead for three days.”
Porter’s health challenges were first revealed in September 2025 when Cabaret cut its Broadway run short after the Pose star withdrew from the production as he recovered from a “serious case of sepsis,” according to the production at the time.
Now, he’s detailing his months-long health battle, which started when he initially contracted a urinary infection during his Cabaret run on the West End in London from January to May.
“The medicine in the U.K. is trash,” he said. “Four rounds of antibiotics and 10 to 12 weeks later, it’s a kidney infection with kidney stones. Fast forward, they finally give me medicine. It seems to go away.”
However, after he returned to the U.S. and started rehearsals for the Broadway production of Cabaret, “the kidney stone pain [came] back.”
“By Tuesday, I checked myself into the hospital because I’m in so much pain,” Porter recalled, as he tried to hold back tears. “They went in to do a routine check. They saw that the kidney stone was trapped in my urethra… put a stent in, redirected the urine, [and] blasted me with real antibiotics. Not that weak shit. Then go in through my penis and blow up the kidney stones.”
Porter hoped his condition would start to improve from there, but things took a turn for the worse.
“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,” he recounted, adding that he was then hooked up on life support. “I was dead for three days. I am a miracle. I’m a walking miracle.”
The actor continued, “When I woke up, they told me my leg had gone into compartment syndrome, which is when the muscles close in on themselves and cut off the oxygen. So 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, leave it open for two days so they could save my leg.”
Ported said he’s thankful to be doing much better now, adding, “I am so grateful to be here. It is such a gift.”
He previously updated his fans in December in an Instagram video that he’s “on the road to a full recovery. I’m not there yet, but I’m on the road to that” following a “very challenging four months.”
Urosepsis is a serious type of sepsis, which is a condition in which the body responds improperly to an infection, according to the Mayo Clinic. Urosepsis, specifically, is a severe complication of a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) where the infection spreads to the bloodstream.
