Emmy Award-winning producer Howard Gordon’s latest project is Accused on Fox. The series is a collection of 15 intense stories of crime and punishment. Every episode is its own fast-paced and provocative thriller that explores a different crime, with a new cast every week. Each story is told from the defendant’s perspective through a series of flashbacks.
“Robyn’s Story” will be told on Tuesday, February 21st. As a man, Kevin, who is played by J. Harrison Ghee, is a shy and mild-mannered ESL teacher. Onstage, she’s Robyn Banks, a fierce drag queen with all the confidence and charisma in the world. When Kevin falls for a closeted man who is secretly living a double life, their affair has devastating consequences, resulting in Kevin’s arrest.
To help tell this story, Gordon reached out to the one and only Billy Porter and asked if he would be interested in directing “Robyn’s Story.” “When I read the script, I immediately said yes,” Porter reveals in the featurette.
“We’re in this really remarkable time. Stories are being told about a cross section of communities,” Porter explains. “This episode really shows what happens when we don’t feel like we can be our true selves.”
Gordon calls Billy Porter “a national treasure” and says that “He brought an energy to it and a perspective that nobody else could have possibly brought.”
Gordon knew Porter’s experience as a Black and queer person would bring a level of authenticity he couldn’t have added on his own. “This particular story is in my DNA. Howard knew that they needed me to tell this story authentically and with grace, care, and respect,” Porter explains.
Porter, who previously starred in the Emmy Award winning FX series Pose, talks about how “Robyn’s Story” is similar to the show. “Very much like Pose, while we sit in the trauma, and that is the story we’re telling, we get to pop into the club for the joy, for the community, for the chosen family, for the unconditional love of it all.”
Porter says that it’s his life’s work to tell his community’s stories. “My work is about humanizing all, it’s everything to me.”
Find out what happens in “Robyn’s Story” Tuesday, February 21st, on Fox. New episodes of Accused air Tuesday nights at 9:00/8:00 Central.