Finally, we know who to thank for all those Fellow Travelers sex scenes!
In a new interview on Entertainment Weekly‘s “The Awardist” podcast, stars Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer got candid about their Emmy-nominated Showtime limited series.
It’s a frank and emotional LGBTQ+ love story that likely wouldn’t have been greenlit a decade ago. (And yes, there’s tons of horniness in there too.)
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Bomer, who portrays State Department official Hawk Fuller, admitted that he probably wouldn’t have even “seen the script for it 10 years ago,” and credited the show’s production company for their support.
“From the beginning, [they] were giving us notes that weren’t constricting at all,” he explained.
“They were actually really liberating. They were saying, ‘No, go farther. Embarass 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 people who were in power who could make those decisions.”
“Embarass yourself”? “Go too far?”
Now, all those feet-licking sequences are starting to make more sense. Kidding! LOL. 🤪
And while Gay Twitter X discourse largely revolved around the series’ sexier moments, it’s those uninhibited and authentic scenes that made Fellow Travelers‘ heavier themes so impactful.
Even more noteworthy is that the historical romance — which follows its characters from the height of McCarthyism in the ’50s through the onset of the AIDS crisis in the ’80s — is led by two LGBTQ+ actors.
That type of queer representation is something that Bailey, who played idealist congressional staffer Tim Laughlin, doesn’t take for granted.
“The majority of awards go to straight actors playing gay because there’s this sense that that means that they’re somehow brave or that they’re mixing it up,” he explained, adding that there’s “a bruise” in Hollywood history that “out gay men” aren’t able to portray their own experiences onscreen.
Despite being appreciative of heterosexual actors in LGBTQ+ projects like Brokeback Mountain and Milk, Bailey added that being part of queer storytelling — often “so complicated, [filled] so much pain” yet featuring “resilience” and “spirit” — was all the more meaningful.
The entire conversation doubled as a fairly convincing campaign for this year’s Emmys, which are currently in the final round of voting.
A handful of wins at the September 15 ceremony would be validating for Bomer, who’s nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor and Bailey, who scored an Outstanding Supporting Actor nod after being snubbed at this year’s Golden Globes.
And if a meaningful win for LGBTQ+ performers isn’t convincing enough, Bailey made a different type of plea to Emmy voters via behind-the-scene pics of his characters’ costume fittings.
C’mon Emmy voters, let’s give those thighs some gold!
EdWoody
They are not LGBTQ+ actors. They are GAY actors. Are they lesbian? Are they bisexual? Are they transgender? No, they are not. So they are not LGBTQ+, are they? They’re just gay. In your attempts to be inclusive or cool or whatever, you’ve lost track of what words actually mean. LGBTQ+ is a term for the community as a whole, not for individual people within it. Yes, this is a nitpick, but I’m fed up of supposedly professional writers getting such basic things wrong.
Apolodorus
Red flag
waldorf
Brilliant reply by EdWoody. As he said, they are gay actors, there is no such thing as a LGBTQ+ actor.