Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer spark a decades-spanning romance in Fellow Travelers teaser
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Washington, D.C., 1952. It's the night Dwight D. Eisenhower wins the presidential election in a landslide, a victory credited in part to demagogue Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy. Two men catch each other's eyes from across the celebration party. Hawkins Fuller (Magic Mike's Matt Bomer), a suit-and-tie-clad power player in politics, smirks at Tim Laughlin (Bridgerton's Jonathan Bailey), a bespectacled and handsome newcomer on the scene.
There's a flash and now it's weeks later. The two lovers are in the throngs of an intoxicating torrid affair at the time of McCarthy's moral purge of homosexuals from government, the Lavender Scare. There's another flash and Hawk is taking a photo of Tim along the beach, years in the future. Another flash takes us back in time to a hallway on the Hill, where the two gents steal private glances.
This is how time works in Fellow Travelers, Bomer and Bailey's upcoming Showtime miniseries. So it's appropriate that the first teaser trailer, which EW exclusively debuts below, reflects that.
"They aren't flashbacks, really. We're putting the different time frames against each other," executive producer Ron Nyswaner, an Oscar nominee for writing 1993's Philadelphia, tells EW in an interview conducted before the Hollywood writers' strike. "It's about the choices that we make having ramifications that we don't see. It's very bad and we might not see them for 30 years, and they alter our lives in different ways. So you live with the choices that you make. Even though you try to avoid them, they usually show up somewhere."
Fellow Travelers is based on the novel of the same name by author Thomas Mallon, but while the book is what Nyswaner calls a "contained story about the '50s in Washington," the series is more ambitious in its scope.
Described as an epic love story entangled in a political thriller, the limited series tracks Hawk and Tim across four decades, through the Lavender Scare, the Vietnam War protests of the '60s, the disco scene of the '70s, and the AIDS crisis of the '80s.
SHOWTIME Jonathan Bailey's Tim and Matt Bomer's Hawkins fall into an intoxicating romance in 'Fellow Travelers'
The show also happens to be sexy as hell! Bomer and Bailey first got attention for these roles after paparazzi captured thirst-trap photos of their shirtless selves in character, splashing around on the Canadian beaches on the show's set. Neither those photos nor the first teaser come anywhere close to what audiences will see of their sexual chemistry.
Nyswaner worked on Ray Donovan and Homeland for Showtime during the 10 years he mulled making this new show, and he sees elements of both in Fellow Travelers.
In the character of Hawk, "There's a bit of a Ray Donovan, an unknowable person who doesn't seem to be able to love," he says. "And in Homeland, which is a thriller… we had a rule, which is if a scene doesn't push a story forward, then there's no reason it should exist." Nyswaner brought that rule to Fellow Travelers. Though, he admits, "It's really hard in our show to take scenes out." When you have Bailey and Bomer getting hot and heavy on screen together, we understand why.
Also starring Allison Williams, Jelani Alladin, and Noah Ricketts, Fellow Travelers will premiere on Paramount+ with Showtime this fall.
Watch the teaser trailer above.
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