Billy Porter has just claimed he was “dead for three days” during his blood poisoning battle.
In September 2025, the 56-year-old actor retired from playing the Emcee in the Broadway production Cabaret after he was diagnosed with a “severe case” of the life-threatening disease.
And now Billy has revealed that after a ‘routine check-up’ doctors discovered a kidney stone ‘stuck in my urethra’, causing him to develop a type of sepsis called urosepsis, which starts in the urinary tract and moves to the kidneys.
On the latest episode of the Outlaws with TS Madison podcast, the artist shared, “When they got in there, there was so much pus, bile and infection behind the stone. It bubbled up and I became uroseptic within minutes.”
Billy’s condition became so serious that doctors hooked him up to an ECMO machine and put him in a coma for several days.
According to the National Health Service (NHS), the machine “pumps blood from a large vein through an artificial lung (the membrane) outside your body” so that the “artificial lung adds oxygen to the blood and removes waste carbon dioxide.”
And “blood is then returned” to an individual’s body “via another large vein” near the heart.
Billy continued, “I was on the ECMO machine. I was dead for three days,” now calling himself a “walking miracle.”
After the two-time Emmy winner woke up and was taken off life support, doctors told Billy that his legs had “gone into compartment syndrome, which means the muscles close in on themselves and cut off oxygen.”
“So they had to cut me open on both sides of my leg while I was in a coma, and from my knee to my hip, and leave it open for two days so they could save my leg,” he said.
However, after the invasive procedures, Billy made a full recovery and is “so grateful to be here.”
The TV personality explained: “And as I sat in my hospital bed thinking, I heard a few things. The first thing I heard was: Work smarter, not harder. The second thing I heard was: Be obedient and answer the call. And the third thing I heard was: Never stop telling the truth again.”
“I subconsciously silenced myself for fear that I would no longer be on the A-list,” concluded Billy Porter.
