Billy Porter apologized to Harry Styles after criticizing his Vogue cover: 'The conversation is not about you'
- Billy Porter apologized to Harry Styles during a Thursday appearance on "The Late Show."
- The "Pose" actor previously criticized Styles for appearing on the cover of Vogue in a dress.
Billy Porter offered an open apology to Harry Styles following his criticism of the singer's Vogue cover.
"Harry Styles, I apologize to you for having your name in my mouth. It's not about you. The conversation is not about you," he said during a Thursday appearance on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
The "Pose" actor previously told The Sunday Times that he "created the conversation" around gender-fluid fashion in Hollywood.
He said didn't agree with Vogue's decision to put "a straight white man" in a dress on their cover instead, though Styles has declined to publicly label his sexuality.
"I'm not dragging Harry Styles, but he is the one you're going to try and use to represent this new conversation? He doesn't care, he's just doing it because it's the thing to do," Porter said in the interview. "This is politics for me. This is my life."
On "The Late Show," Porter clarified that he doesn't believe Styles is the root of the issue.
"The conversation is actually deeper than that, it is about the systems of oppression and erasure of people of color who contribute to the culture," he said.
"Now, that's a lot to unpack," he continued. "I'm willing to unpack it sans the dragging and cancel culture of the internet because I do not now, nor will I ever, adjudicate my life or humanity in sound bites on social media."
Porter concluded by offering Styles another apology.
"I didn't mean no harm," he said. "I'm a gay man. We like Harry, he's cute."
Porter's criticism was echoed by many members of the LGBTQ community when the singer's Vogue cover was unveiled in November 2020.
While plenty of fans celebrated his photo shoot as a milestone for breaking down aesthetic gender norms, others questioned the magazine's decision to center a white, cisgender man in a movement largely founded by transgender people of color.
Many critics were more skeptical of Vogue than of Styles himself, calling for the magazine - and the fashion industry at large - to embrace trans and non-binary people with the same enthusiasm.