‘Who’s The Boss?’ star tells Oprah about HIV and crystal meth use

In a new interview with Oprah Winfrey, former Who’s The Boss? child star Danny Pintauro reveals he’s been living with HIV for the past 12 years – and opens up about his destructive use of crystal meth.

The 39-year-old actor, who played the young Jonathan Bower in the Tony Danza sitcom from 1984-1992, says on the latest episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now? that he tested positive for HIV 12 years ago, Queerty reports.

“I was living in New York at the time and completely clueless to the idea that I was positive. I went in for a regular checkup. It was just regular blood work. You go in, and you sort of waited two weeks on pins and needles — or at least I did, because I was just terrified of the idea of getting HIV.”

Pintauro, who came out publicly during an interview with the National Enquirer in 1997, told Oprah that he was experimenting sexually around the time he received the diagnosis.

“I was doing crystal meth, which completely ruins your immune system. I’d been doing it at that point very briefly, but it was three weeks or so, off and on. I had just come out of a two-year relationship, and I discovered in that relationship that there was more I wanted to explore sexually. Crystal meth takes away your inhibitions… And if you want to explore that adventurous side, taking the drug is going to put you there. I was experimenting. And believe it or not, I thought that I was being safe in that encounter. I know exactly when it happened.”

Pintauro, who married his partner Will Tabares (pictured below) last year, says his Who’s the Boss? costars Judith Light and Tony Danza have been supportive about his diagnosis and his decision to go public.

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“I feel like in the gay community, we’ve been spending so much energy trying to become socially acceptable and so much energy trying to make marriage happen – which I think are 100 percent important – and, in doing that, we’ve forgotten about taking care of each other a little bit,” he said. “Back when the AIDS crisis was happening … back when we weren’t really socially acceptable, we still took good care of each other because we only had each other. We didn’t have all of our other friends and coworkers or any of that to turn to.”

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