Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer tell a decades-spanning love story, set against a dark time in American history, in the miniseries “Fellow Travelers.”
“It’s a once or twice in a career experience to get to tell characters’ stories for three plus decades,” Bomer tells TODAY.com.
It also seems to be a “once or twice in a career” friendship between the two stars.
As we sit down to chat after their appearance on TODAY, I tell Bailey this interview will be audio-only, not on camera.
“So you’ll get to hear Matt’s Elphaba riff,” Bailey jokes, before Bomer belts out a near-perfect tenor rendition of the closing notes of “Defying Gravity.”
In addition to “Fellow Travelers,” which premiered on Showtime in October 2023 and led to both stars , Bailey is also gearing up for the release of the film adaptation of
“I wore my emerald shirt to support,” Bomer says later.
Throughout the interview, they share effusive praise for each other. Bomer was a “huge fan” of Bailey’s work before they met, he says, and the “Bridgerton” actor then “exceeded all expectations.” Bailey credits Bomer, who served as an executive producer on the show, with making “the whole thing happen.”
“He’s been a hero for a long time,” Bailey says of his co-star.
Their friendship may be the happily ever after that, on its surface, is absent from their show.
“Fellow Travelers” chronicles the love story between political consultants Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Bailey) over the course of four decades. Their relationship starts against the backdrop of the Lavender Scare in 1950s Washington D.C. and runs all the way up to San Francisco in the ’80s, at the start of the AIDS epidemic.
The show is romantic, sexy, moving and devastating, right up until the last line.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead for the finale of “Fellow Travelers.”)
An ‘instantaneous’ friendship
Bomer says their friendship was “instantaneous.”
“I feel like we went from coworkers to friends the first time we read together,” he says. “It was so great to have someone I could completely trust as my scene partner and lean on and who made me better every day as an actor an a person at times.”
He adds, “It was never really an effort.”
Because their characters maintain an off-and-on again relationship over the years, Bailey and Bomer saw their characters through different ages and life phases.
That “nature of the love story” means they “grew with every scene,” Bailey says.
“One of the most bonding experiences was seeing each other turning up through the different decades — see how we were aging, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not, and then sometimes gracefully again,” he says. “We’re bonded, I’d say, for life.”
‘Fellow Travelers,’ ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘Wicked’ — oh my!
The intensity of the show’s emotions was matched by the intensity of filming.
Bailey, known for his breakout role as in “Bridgerton” Season 2, filmed Season 3 of “Bridgerton” and his upcoming film “Wicked” at the same time as the Showtime drama.
When how he kept all the roles in his head, he simply answered, “I don’t know.”
But he did recall a time when his roles as Tim in “Fellow Travelers” and overlapped.
“There was one afternoon where we had a two-way trailer,” Bailey said. “And the trailer was sort of rocking.”
“I was like, ‘What’s going on in Johnny’s trailer?'” Bomer recalled.
“I came out really sweaty,” Bailey continued. “My Tim glasses were on, and I had on Adidas from the waist down, and I had been practicing my ‘Wicked’ choreography.”
At its busiest, “Fellow Travelers” filmed for entire days — literally.
“Some of the days were like 20 hours,” Bailey recalls to TODAY.com.
They filmed Episode 6, “Beyond Measure,” largely set in the ‘60s —years since Tim and Hawk last spoke — in about three days, Bailey says.
“We had to wrap the show. You had places you had to be, and the schedule was so tight, we were just doing 18-hour days, 20-hour days,” Bomer adds.
This happened after the actors had filmed the final scenes of the show.
“So we’d done the real heavy moment —,” Bailey says, as Bomer adds, “We had this great release for the whole experience. But then we had to go back.”
And about that ending…
“Fellow Travelers” turns out to be a frame narrative. The show both opens and ends in the ’80s during Tim and Hawk’s last reunion, before Tim dies of complications from AIDS.
Tim’s death is not shown on screen. Instead, it’s revealed through the final scene, which sees Hawk and his daughter looking at Tim’s name on the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987. For the first time, Hawk tells her about his relationship with Tim.
The last lines of the show are Bomer’s.
“He wasn’t my friend. He was the man I loved,” Hawk says.
Both actors confirm that the last time Tim and Hawk saw each other was in 1986 at the political gala shown in Episode 8. After Tim tries and fails to get an audience with the California governor to advocate for a crucial AIDS bill, he interrupts the event with a protest. But before taking the stage, Hawk kisses Tim, who then tells his longtime love to go home.
“I have to fight this fight. That means letting go of everything else. And if you’re around, I will not be able to let go,” Tim says.
Bomer calls their ending “brilliant.”
“To see Tim in this moment of absolute triumph, where he is his most authentic self, pumping his fist in the air with a passion and a cause — everything that he had tried to hard to be in the ’50s, he is celebrating out loud in the ’80s,” Bomer says. “I just thought it was such a beautiful, heartbreaking way to go out.”
Tim’s arc “ends with his strongest moment, even though his body is dying,” Bailey adds.
Hawk meanwhile, “hits the ‘f-it’ button,” Bomer says.
“To kiss Tim openly is such a huge, revolutionary act (for Hawk),” he adds. “So he’s definitely made the choice that he’s going to take a complete new path for his life.”
Bailey says the gala was the last time Tim and Hawk saw each other “in this world.”
“From the last scene, you can tell that he will live on as Hawk’s great love of his life,” Bomer adds. “Forever.”
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