‘Fellow Travelers’ Was ‘An Education’ for Matt Bomer

“Fellow Travelers” executive producer and star Matt Bomer considers himself fortunate to have had several roles delve back into different chapters of LGBTQ history, from his work in “Boys in the Band” to “The Normal Heart.” His experience, however, of playing Hawkins Fuller opposite Jonathan Bailey as Tim Laughlin in the Showtime limited series adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name, a multi-decade romance between two men that met during the Lavender Scare, “was an education for me,” said the actor. “This was such an amazing way to string it all together.”

Speaking at panel for “Fellow Travelers” alongside creator and executive producer Ron Nyswaner, executive producer and director Dan Minahan, and composer Paul Leonard-Morgan, which kicked off the IndieWire and Paramount+ Consider This FYC event that took place in Los Angeles on June 8, Bomer called his fellow IndieWire Honors Wavelength Award recipient Nyswaner “such an incredible educator, and a gentle, and intelligent, and informative educator.”

While the novel is set in the era in Washington D.C. where Senator Joe McCarthy reigned, expelling hundreds of so-called “deviants” from civil service, “Fellow Travelers” screenwriter Nyswaner saw several opportunities to expand the piece into something more inclusive of both the types of people who were impacted, and the time’s reverberations through queer history. “Marcus and Frankie are not part of that book,” he said of Jelani Alladin and Noah J. Ricketts’ supporting characters. “I wanted to have a Black queer love story to parallel our white queer love story.”

The rest took foundation in personal experience. “I came out in the late ’70s, and I had lived through that and the AIDS crisis, an incredibly foundational part of my life. And so I just wanted to tell that story too,” he said. “And I just thought, ‘How great to see Hawkins Fuller and Tim, and Marcus and Frankie go through all of that stuff? And we just went for it.”

The later periods of his character’s life during the ’70s and ’80s were an especially rewarding challenge for Bomer. “I’m at a point now where I know a lot of people who are Hawk’s age, his oldest age, and I know that you’re not hunched over with a cane. You’re still very much an alive and active human being,” he said. “And so I think it’s tricky to age through middle life. It’s actually the trickiest phase as an actor to try to progress through age with very subtle gradations.”

However, director Minahan revealed that there was one scene early on where Bomer’s character sort of takes his mask off that ended up not making it to air. “After a cocktail party, all the women go downstairs and have dessert. All the men go upstairs and smoke cigars in the study with Joseph Alsop. And Roy Cohn and Schein are there. And Matt’s character just completely lets them have it, and makes the most inappropriate sexual innuendo, makes a joke of these people. And this super silliest character, Joseph Alsop, who has been hosting this party, stops him on his way out, is like, ‘You’re going to regret that. You can’t mess with these people,’” he said. “And sadly, I understood why Ron cut it, because it was never paid off later. But it was a remarkable scene.” 

Minahan had more to share on what it was like working with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nyswaner, saying “the thing that was really important to me was that we stuck to the immediacy of the material. And it was always the emotion in the foreground, that we were not making a series that was pretending to be a film in the 1950s. I wanted it to be very accessible to people.” The creator had beautifully established the tone, and it was his job to go through the scripts with him looking for ways to visually “bring out all the feels in every scene,” he said.

Hiring composer Leonard-Morgan, who had worked on the Prime Video series “Tales from the Loop,” was Minahan’s suggestion, even using his previous work as temp tracks for early cuts of “Fellow Travelers.” Thankfully, when the composer came onboard, those were cleared away, allowing him to not think “I’ll try and replicate it,” he said. “I come on, and all I get to do is just make it even more beautiful, which is really hard, because it’s already beautifully acted, beautifully written, beautifully directed. It truly is. It doesn’t happen that much.”

Leonard-Morgan’s own experience working with Nyswaner was hearing the showrunner tell him “You don’t need to overwrite this.” Though that did not mean he didn’t have room to be ambitious. The opposite is actually true. “The only time I struggled was with the final cue… it’s the hardest thing, because you don’t want the show to end,” said the composer. “I wrote this thing, I played it to Ron, and Ron was like, ‘I like it. I was like, ‘What do you mean you like it? I put my heart and soul into this.’ And he’s like, ‘I feel you’re holding back.’” The reminder led Leonard-Morgan what he says is “one of the things I’m most proud of in my career, because it’s a six and a half minute cue, and [Ron] pushed me to do it.”

Bomer was similarly emotional about working on the final moments of “Fellow Travelers.” “We had the actual AIDS Quilt flown in as a set piece. And I didn’t know that we were going to have the real quilt there that day. And it was one of those moments as an actor, that you just have to get out of your own way, and realize how much bigger than you this story is. And it put everything into perspective,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Nyswaner was the most affected by a scene from the first episode that sets up the aforementioned conclusion, where Hawk hears Tim is sick and flies to San Francisco just to call and tell him he’s here if he needs him. “The way Dan directed it, and Simon shot it, and Matt performs it, he’s just sitting there. He’s looking out this big plate glass window, and he’s watching San Francisco gay life on Castro Street go by,” said the screenwriter, paying compliments back to the rest of the panel. “Paul’s score is playing, you understand everything you need to know about Hawk. He’s thinking, ‘I could have maybe been part of this, but I made certain choices along the way, and I’m not part of this. And yet my redemption will come if that phone rings.’ And how they do that without a writer in sight, is attributed to the power of film.”

Look for the full panel above. “Fellow Travelers” is available on Showtime and Paramount+.