‘You’re cute – and I’m old!’: Billy Porter and Sam Morrison talk about collaborating on a comedy about love and death | comedy

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

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

Porter and Morrison came together via video call to talk hecklers, the healing properties of laughter and bridging the gap between generations of gay men. A beaming Morrison flies in from Los Angeles while Porter speaks from his home in New York, where the temperature is 3 degrees Celsius. “Winter is a choice,” he says grimly. “And I want to make a different one.”

In sugar daddy, Jonathan He is described as a bear. Can you explain that to those who are not familiar with the term?

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

Sam Morrison On the show, I have a joke: I’m a Bears fan and I’m diabetic. My type is type 1, my type He writes He 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?

poison This is a show about love, and it’s about what you do after you lose that love. For better or worse, I deal with life through comedy and telling jokes. After Jonathan died, I started doing stand-up again, and at a certain point, I felt crazy no To talk about it. I’ve always talked about my life and what I think about it. And that was all I could think about.

baby It’s called processing. We have to deal with our grief and trauma, and we all do it in different ways. Going back to the records of history, you will find that many comedians suffer from depression. 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 a person who deals with difficult matters to laugh. Laughter is the greatest healing medicine.

I think there’s something powerful about a single standing space, and this piece is shot right in the middle of it. He’s telling the truth, and it’s our duty as artists to tell the truth. There is a lot of lying going on at the moment and a lot of silence. I’m moving into stand-up comedy now because I feel so angry about what’s happening in the world and what’s not being done to address it. I know I deal with my art and I always have.

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

baby It’s about being a queer leader in industry and culture. If my name is on something, people will understand that it is quality. This is the hope.

poison I’ll add that I’ve been a fan of Billy for a long time, and I’ve always wondered: How do I get him to see this?

baby Send it to her! Send her to the bitch!

poison for me [having Billy involved] Very surreal. When you’re a closed-minded kid and you see someone like Billy playing Billy on TV, you’re like, “Oh my God, can you do that? Can you do this weird thing you do with your fingers on TV? I didn’t think they’d let it.” Once you hear me talk about my show, Billy, you’ll get to the bottom of it.

baby Well, you’re cute and I’m old. Well, oldany. But honey, I’ve been here a little longer, so I’ve had a little practice.

poison I think that’s the show’s tagline: “You’re cute and I’m old.”

baby There’s something else I love about Sugar Daddy. The categories within gay culture that were created to initially reinforce the community often keep people out. So the mainstream white gay community is very specific. And if you don’t fit into whiteness and the physicality of it, you can be [cast] outside. But in this article, 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 beauty. It is a version of what is prevalent in our culture. But he tells us from the beginning: “Yes, I like overweight daddy bears.”

Sam, can you talk about the shame you felt about that?

poison I guess I didn’t tell anyone I was gay for a long time because of who I was attracted to. The truth is, I’m attracted to fat old men, and whatever you imagine, fatter and older. No one understands him and no one believes him.

baby I get it! Some of us get it.

SM Coming into my own whole self was about realizing how fatphobic this country is and then working through my own internalized fatphobia. Standing up is a good way to talk about it. It’s fun to be able to get up there and scream and express it. I like to do it that hard way, maybe because it comes from…

baby fact! It comes from a place of truth!

SM Also anxiety and anger. I don’t know why our society is obsessed with thin people. And doing it in a comedy club is a lot more confrontational. There are a lot of people who are put off by those jokes.

Was there a lot of negative feedback?

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

Sugar Daddy has now moved from comedy clubs to theaters. Did that environment make people more polite?

SM I definitely feel that way. People are mostly respectful now. I don’t think anything compares to the Comedy Club in Times Square at two in the morning. I mean, this is my bread and butter, and if they don’t throw things at me, that’s great.

baby Did I throw shit at you?

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

baby No, you’re exaggerating, and that’s okay. I felt it Something It was thrown at you.

SM I have had comedic experiences where I felt like my safety was threatened. I had one group where people were chanting “faggot.”

baby And what did you say? [Yells] “Is that all you bastards are?”

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

baby We need to hang out more, because that’s enough. [You need to say] “Is that all you bitches have to say? Faggot? Yes, I’m a faggot. So what next?” Do you see my anger? That’s why I try to go into comedy, because I dare to bitch. I dare you.

For those who haven’t watched the show, can you explain where the topic of diabetes comes in?

poison About six months after Jonathan died, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The doctor said that diabetes was caused by sadness. His diabetes was latent, so he was waiting for something to trigger it.

baby The same thing happened to me. I had an infection in my teeth that became systemic before it started to hurt. The shock from the infection and the intensity of antibiotics led to type 2 diabetes, which was in my genes.

SM So, in the series, both things — my diagnosis and my grief — are happening at the same time. I am sad that I have to deal with this chronic condition. Diabetes is a funny thing. Like, this life-threatening disease is controlled with candy, and it all sounds like Willy Wonka.

baby This is a joke of the show.

poison Don’t give away my secrets, Billy! But yes, it is a disease that forces you to take care of yourself. But you have no control over it, which is what grief feels like. You have to listen to your body and do your best, but you also have to say, “I’m going to fail” and not get mad at yourself if you do. Because if you are angry with yourself…

baby High blood sugar.

SM This is correct! Your emotions affect this too.

There’s another disease at Sugar Daddy’s heart, and that’s Covid. The image of Sam caring for his partner infected with a devastating virus has strong echoes of… AIDS crisis. Was that conscious?

SM Yes, and the show’s setting is Provincetown, which has a history with AIDS. I guess that’s one of the many gifts of being around you [older men] It is to hear about these stories. Many of my generation have no idea how AIDS affects and shapes everything.

baby For me, that was very exciting. The whole Covid thing was interesting to me because it was exactly the same. The government’s stupidity was the same, and the blame was the same. I have now lived through two plagues.

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

poison Of course, the more time passes, the more I appreciate that chase. I still communicate with him and talk to him in my head all the time. But now I can share it with other people.

Sugar Daddy is located on Underbelly Boulevard, Soho, London, March 5 Until April 4.