WATCH: CNN’s Chris Wallace Tells Billy Porter ‘I Almost Cried’ During Emotionally Gripping Exchange On Sexual Abuse

In a gripping and emotional interview, CNN anchor Chris Wallace told star entertainer and LGBTQ+ activist Billy Porter “I almost cried” while reading a passage in Porter’s book Unprotected dealing with childhood sexual abuse.

The latest interviews from Wallace’s series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace on HBO Max feature filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, journalist Kara Swisher, and Porter.

In a particularly intense part of an emotional and empathetic interview, Wallace and Porter discussed the palpable pain that shot through the star’s early life, especially the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather:

WALLACE: Which brings us to your memoir unprotected, which is just out in paperback. And I want to read something from the prologue, the very first page of this book, you write, by the time I was five, it was all too clear that something was wrong with me. Everyone knew it. And I knew it too, Billy, what did you think was quote, wrong with you? And how did the world let you know, at the age of five,

PORTER: well, I didn’t really have a language for it. In retrospect, it was my gayness. And retrospect, I was a sissy. I grew up in the Pentecostal church. And my family saw that behavior. And they weren’t happy with it. And like many of us, queer kids, it’s from fear, right, the behavior of our caregivers, they’re scared. They fear for us.

WALLACE: but in a way, it’s even worse than that. I mean, it’s not gee, he’s going to have a tough life. And I’m sorry, my son is going to have to go through this. Your mom thought it was a sin.

PORTER: Yeah, not just my mom, everybody around me thought it was a sin. And still, many of them still do think it’s a sin, you know, in our world and in our culture it’s still that which I find really, really unnerving.

WALLACE: I want to pick up on this because, and I have to say, I almost cried at this point, because then, after feeling this tremendous when you say you couldn’t put it into words, this tremendous sense of being different of being wrong, as you say, your mom marries your stepfather, and your stepfather seems to take you under his wing, and he’s going to protect you and he’s going to teach you what it is to be a man. Until at the age of seven, he starts sexually abusing you. And I found that so painful because I thought, This little boy, seven year old Billy Porter, he just can’t find a safe haven.

PORTER: There was no safety for me. I was sent to a psychologist, when I was five for a year, every Wednesday after kindergarten because of my sissyness, and at the end of that evaluation, this man said in front of me, ‘Billy is fine. You just need to get a man around the house, who will teach them to be more of a man.’ So within a year my mother had met and married my stepfather. And when the abuse started, there was nothing violent about it. You know, people talk about grooming. I was very groomed. I felt very loved. I felt very seen. And because of what I had already gone through my little seven-year-old mind thought, Oh, well, these are my man lessons.

WALLACE: But he’s abusing you.

PORTER: I didn’t know that it was abused till I was 25 years old. I couldn’t say the words that it was sexual abuse until I was in therapy at 25 years old. And my therapist said that’s sexual abuse. Five-year-old, seven-year-olds do not have sexual dalliances with grown men. That’s not a thing. It’s not right. You were not in control of it. I think there was also something about me that knew that the adults around me did not have the tools to protect me at the time. And so I was grown, as far as I was concerned, because I had to be. And so for years, I experienced that because when I said I wanted to stop at 12, it stopped. Right. So I experienced that as if I had control over it. And that it was my choice.

WALLACE: And of course, it wasn’t.

PORTER: no, it wasn’t.

Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace drops three full episodes each Friday morning, and CNN airs a version recapping highlights of the episodes every Sunday at 7 p.m.

Watch the full exchange above via HBO Max and CNN.