Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey. Kurt Iswarienko/SHOWTIME
Showtime’s Fellow Travelers left the internet buzzing with chatter about the sex scenes between stars Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, which Bomer says is all thanks to the support system making the project.
Fellow Travelers aired on the network in fall 2023 and is based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name. In the limited series, Bailey, 36, and Bomer, 46, play two political staffers who fall in love and hide their affair. It takes place in the 1950s, a time when openly gay men were not permitted to hold positions in the federal government — and the so-called Red Scare led by Senator Joseph McCarthy created a climate of fear and paranoia
Reflecting on how far queer storytelling has come, Bomer, who came out as gay in 2012, said he doesn’t know if he would have “seen the script for it 10 years ago.”
“I have to say creatively on this, so much of my cynicism was obliterated, particularly by the fact that we were lucky enough to work with [production company] Fremantle and Showtime, who from the beginning were giving us notes that weren’t constricting at all,” Bomer, 46, said while appearing on the Tuesday, August 20 episode of Entertainment Weekly’s “The Awardist” podcast. (Both Bomer and Bailey were nominated for Emmys for their performances.)
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“They were actually really liberating,” the Doom Patrol actor continued. “They were saying, no, go farther. Embarrass yourself. Go too far. Try to scare us. Try to see how far you can push it. And that kind of permission, I felt, even bled into the acting work on set because it came from the people who were in power who could make those decisions.”
Bomer added, “I just feel so grateful that we had a group of people behind us who really believed in [show creator Ron Nyswaner’s] writing and the story and us, our whole cast, and really got behind us and gave us the opportunity to put this project together and put it out in the world because maybe 10 years ago, it would have existed in a different way.”
Bailey echoed the same sentiment in an interview from December 2023, when he elaborated on how he was given “precise” direction regarding a certain toe-sucking scene with Bomer.
“It was very, very precisely written down — it was as precise as it needed to be,” Bailey told The Hollywood Reporter at the time.. “I saw that as an incredible way to dissect power. I got it when I read it, and I wasn’t intimidated by it.”
The Bridgerton star, who came out as gay in 2018, also noted that those provocative sex scenes “were a really external representation of what was going on with these characters internally, emotionally.”
“For me, it was really refreshing to see the gay love scenes brought to light in a really unflinching way,” he continued.
Both Bailey and Bomer were both nominated for a 2024 Primetime Emmy for their work on Fellow Travelers. Bomer received a nod for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and Bailey for Outstanding SupportingActor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.