‘You’re sweet – and I’m old!’: Billy Porter and Sam Morrison on teaming up for a comedy about love and death

The Emmy-winning singer and actor was so struck by the comedian’s autobiographical one-man show Sugar Daddy that he signed on as producer. The pair discuss ‘bears’, blood sugar and bridging the divides between generations of gay men

Sugar Daddy is a one-man show about “love, grief and insulin” by the 31-year-old standup Sam Morrison. An autobiographical monologue that turns tragedy into comedy, it tells of how Morrison fell in love with Jonathan, who was 24 years his senior, after meeting him at a gay bear festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2021, two and a half years into their relationship, Jonathan died from Covid.

For the last four years, Morrison has been performing Sugar Daddy around the world; next month he brings an updated version to London’s West End. The co-producer is Billy Porter, 56, the Emmy-winning singer, actor and director whose credits include Pose, American Horror Story and Cabaret.

Porter and Morrison have got together over a video call to talk hecklers, the healing properties of laughter and bridging the divide between generations of gay men. Morrison is beaming in from balmy Los Angeles while Porter is talking from his home in New York, where the temperature is 3C. “Winter is a choice,” he says, grimacing. “And I’d like to make a different one.”

In Sugar Daddy, Jonathan is described as a bear. Can you elaborate for those unfamiliar with the term?

Billy Porter In the gay male community, there are different categories. There are twinks, twunks, bears and otters. Then you have the muscle daddies and the muscle bears.

Sam Morrison In the show, I have a joke: I’m into bears and I’m diabetic. My type is type 1, and my type is type 2. It’s a roundabout way of saying: I like a big boy and a belly.

What inspired you to turn your grief into comedy?

SM This is a show about love, and it’s about what you do after you lose that love. For better or for worse, I process life through comedy and I make jokes. After Jonathan died, I started doing standup again and, at a certain point, it felt crazy not to talk about it. I’ve always been into talking about my life and what I’m thinking about. And this was all I was thinking about.

BP It’s called processing. We have to process our grief and our trauma, and we all do it in different ways. And go back into the annals of history, you’ll see lots of comedians are depressed. The first time I watched this show, my mother was still alive. She died two years ago so I also find myself processing grief. It is necessary for human beings dealing with difficult things to laugh. Laughter is the greatest medicine for healing.

I think there’s something powerful about the one-person standup space, and this piece shoots right in the middle of that. It tells the truth and, as artists, it’s our job to tell the truth. And there’s a lot of lying going on at the moment and a lot of silence. I’m moving into the standup comedy space right now because I have overwhelming rage with what’s going on in the world and what’s not being done to meet it. I know that I process through my art and I always have.

Billy, you are one of the show’s producers [alongside Alan Cumming]. What does that mean in practice?

BP It has to do with me being a queer leader in the industry and in the culture. If my name is on something, then people understand that it’s quality. That is the hope.

SM I’ll add that I’ve admired Billy for so long, and I was always wondering: how the heck do I get him to see this?

BP Send it to her! Send it to the bitch!

SM For me [having Billy involved] is so surreal. When you’re a closeted kid and you see someone like Billy being Billy on television, you’re like: “Oh my God, you can do that? Like, you can do that weird thing you do with your fingers on television? Like, I didn’t think they would allow that.” Just hearing you talk about my show, Billy, you just get right to the truth of it.

BP Well, you’re sweet and I’m old. OK, older. But honey, I’ve been around a little bit longer, so I’ve had a little bit of practice.

SM I think that’s the tagline for the show: “You’re sweet and I’m old.”

BP There’s another thing that I love about Sugar Daddy. The categories within gay culture that are created to initially foster community very often keep people out. So the mainstream white gay community is very specific. And if you don’t fit into the whiteness and the physicality of that, you can be [cast] out. But in this piece, you’re saying: ‘I’m not supposed to like this kind of person.’ Sam could be at the top of the food chain with his whiteness and his beauty. He is a version of what the mainstream is in our culture. But right from the start, he tells us: “Yeah, I like overweight daddy bears.”

Sam, can you talk about the shame you used to feel about that?

SM I think I didn’t tell anyone I was gay for so long because of who I was attracted to. The fact is I’m attracted to fat, old men and, whatever you’re imagining, it’s fatter and it’s older. No one gets it and no one believes it.

BP I get it! Some of us get it.

SM Fully coming into myself was about realising how fatphobic this country is and then working through my own internalised fatphobia. And standup is just such a good medium to be able to talk about it. It’s fun to be able to go up there and really yell and express that. I like to do it in this challenging way, probably because it comes from …

BP Truth! It comes from a place of truth!

SM And also angst and anger. I just don’t know why our society is so obsessed with skinny people. And to do it in a comedy club is so much more confrontational. There are a lot of people who are put off by those jokes.

Has there been a lot of negative feedback?

SM Oh my God, all the time. On one hand, people will come up to me and they’ll whisper: “I like plus-sized bodies too.” And I’m like: “Why are you whispering?” But most of my career I’ve been performing at New York City comedy clubs, where they’ll yell at you in the middle of the show. They don’t even wait until the end. I’ve been doing these jokes for almost five years, and I’m always shocked at how big the reaction to “I’m attracted to bellies” is.

Sugar Daddy has now moved from comedy clubs into theatres. Has that environment made people more polite?

SM I certainly feel that. People are mostly respectful now. I don’t think anything compares to a comedy club in Times Square at 2am. I mean, that’s my bread and butter, and if they’re not throwing things at me, that’s great.

BP Did you have shit thrown at you?

SM Well, no. I’m lying to the Guardian. Is that bad?

BP No, you’re being hyperbolic, and that’s OK. It felt like something was being hurled at you.

SM I’ve had experiences as a comic where my safety has felt threatened. I had one set where people were chanting “faggot”.

BP And what did you say? [Yells] “Is that all you motherfuckers got?”

SM No, Billy, I’m not like you. I said: “I’m so sorry,” and I ran away.

BP We need to hang out some more, because enough is enough. [You need to say] “Is that all you bitches have? Faggot? Yes, I’m a faggot. What’s next?” Do you see my rage? That’s why I’m trying to go into comedy, because I dare a bitch. I fucking dare you.

For those who haven’t seen the show, can you explain where the diabetes theme comes in?

SM About six months after Jonathan passed, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The doctor said the diabetes was triggered by grief. My diabetes was latent, so it was waiting to be triggered by something.

BP The same thing happened to me. I had an infection in my tooth that went systemic before it started hurting. And the trauma from the infection and the intensity of the antibiotics triggered the type 2 diabetes that was in my genes.

SM So, in the show both these things – my diagnosis and my grief – are happening at the same time. And I’m grieving that I have to deal with this chronic condition. Diabetes is such a funny thing. Like, it’s this life-threatening disease that’s managed with candy, and it all feels very Willy Wonka.

BP That’s a joke from the show.

SM Don’t give away my secrets, Billy! But yes, it’s a disease that forces you to take care of yourself. But you don’t have control over it, which is similar to grief. You have to listen to your body and try your best but also be, like, “I’m going to fuck up” and not be mad at yourself if you do. Because if you get mad at yourself …

BP Your blood sugar spikes.

SM That’s right! Your emotions affect this, too.

There is another disease at the heart of Sugar Daddy, which is Covid. The image of Sam tending to his partner who has a devastating virus has strong echoes of the Aids crisis. Was that conscious?

SM Yes, and the setting for the show is Provincetown, which has such a history with Aids. I think one of the many gifts of being around [older men] is you get to hear about these stories. A lot of my generation has no idea how Aids impacted and shaped everything.

BP For me, that was very triggering. The whole Covid thing was triggering for me because it was exactly the same. And the government’s stupidity was the same, and the blaming was the same. So I’ve lived through two plagues now.

When someone you love dies you can feel that person’s presence afterwards, almost like a friendly haunting, which recedes over time. Has this show kept Jonathan close?

SM Absolutely, and the more time passes the more I value that haunting. I’m still connecting with him and I’m talking to him in my head all the time. But now I get to share him with other people.

Sugar Daddy is at Underbelly Boulevard Soho, London, 5 March to 4 April.