What Fans Need to Know About the Story Behind ‘Fellow Travelers’
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Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey are teaming up for a powerful new series on Showtime, and the story they're telling is one with a lot of history behind it.
The White Collar alum and Bridgerton actor are starring in Fellow Travelers, a drama centering around the decades-long romance of State Department official Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller (Matt) and young congressional aide Tim Laughlin (Jonathan). The two first meet in 1950s Washington, D.C., during the height of the "Lavender Scare," in which, as the National Archives notes, "thousands of gay employees were fired or forced to resign from the federal workforce because of their sexuality."
As the couple hide their love from a highly volatile environment, the show sees their relationship through the political tenure of senator Joseph McCarthy, the disco era of 1970s and eventually the HIV/AIDS epidemic that occurred in the 1980s.
The miniseries evokes a lot of emotion from the actors portraying the characters, and the setting is during a real-life time period in American history. But given how Fellow Travelers relies on a controversial moment as the background for Hawk and Tim's love story, folks are probably wondering if the entire series (including those portrayed in it) is based on true events. We did some research for you, and the answers may come as a surprise.
Is Fellow Travelers based on a true story?
The Lavender Scare and the other historical events and people mentioned in the series are true, but the main characters are not based on specific people. Hawk and Tim's characters actually come straight out of Thomas Mallon's novel of the same name, which was used as the basis for the show to come to life.
'Fellow Travelers'
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As both men find themselves enmeshed with the political world of Washington, D.C. during the McCarthy era, the show does shine a light on real people from that time to help move the story forward. According to a report from Town and Country, journalist Simeon Booker, activist Stormé DeLarverie and senator Robert F. Kennedy are all seen at some point in the series.
What's more, the outlet noted that Fellow Travelers enlisted a researcher to help make sure that the story being told was as historically accurate as possible. "It's fairly historically based, even though it is fiction," the show's creator Ron Nyswaner explained. "I have stacks of books on [Senator Joseph] McCarthy, on [Roy] Cohn, on Washington, on the Lavender Scare, and they all have tons of post-it notes in them, because that's how I do research."
As Hawk and Tim navigate their relationship over the course of three decades, Ron told to Town and County how his own coming-of-age story also helped enhanced the emotional pull between the characters.
"I thought about my own life and how I came of age in the 1960s and ’70s," he noted. "I have an opportunity now to take things I know about being a gay man in the second half of the 20th century... and surviving it."
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