Award-Winning Actor Billy Porter Forced to Sell His New York Home After SAG-AFTRA Strike Fallout

The "Pose" star says he lost out on a lot of work during the SAG-AFTRA strike last year.

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LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 01: Billy Porter attends ‘An Audience With Kylie’ at The Royal Albert Hall on December 01, 2023 in London, England.
LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 01: Billy Porter attends ‘An Audience With Kylie’ at The Royal Albert Hall on December 01, 2023 in London, England.
Photo: Gareth Cattermole (Getty Images)

After just over three years, actor Billy Porter is putting his New York home up for sale. According to TMZ, the financial pressure brought on by last summer’s SAG-AFTRA strike led to the “Pose” star’s decision to sell and walk away from the home he shared with now ex-husband Adam Smith.

According to The Daily Mail, the couple purchased the four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom home in the town of Bellport Village back in October 2020 for $1.4 million. Listed for sale at $2.5 million, the one-acre property comes with some pretty fly features, including a heated lap pool, a home gym and a tree house.

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News that Porter is selling his home isn’t surprising. Porter has not been silent about the hardships he faced during the actors strike, which lasted nearly four months and impacted hundreds of thousands of people in the entertainment industry.

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In an August 2023 interview with The Standard, Porter says the time away from work cost him at least two potential projects.

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“I have to sell my house,” he said. “Yeah! Because we’re on strike. And I don’t know when we’re gonna go back [to work]. The life of an artist, until you make f***-you money — which I haven’t made yet — is still check-to-check. I was supposed to be in a new movie and on a new television show starting in September. None of that is happening. 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.”

A multi-hyphenate stage and screen star, Porter said it was the first home he ever owned.