How 'Fellow Travelers' Created the Hottest Gay Sex Scenes on TV

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FELLOW TRAVELERS, THE new Showtime miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, begins during the height of McCarthyism. But amid a period defined by the anti-communist Red Scare, it explores the lesser-discussed Lavender Scare, in which gay government workers and military service people were rooted out under the pretense that their sexuality made them targets for Soviet blackmail. It's in this landscape that two Washington, D.C. workers—the charming power player Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller (Matt Bomer) and the mousey Christian conservative Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey)—begin a tumultuous relationship that spans decades, through to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. The drama follows pivotal moments in LGBTQ+ history through the eyes of Hawk and Tim. But it also showcases another cornerstone of gay culture: super hot gay sex.

Show creator Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia, and director Daniel Minahan, who's directed episodes of prestige TV dating back to seminal queer drama The L Word, approached the show's scenes as propulsive story beats. The premiere alone (which aired on Paramount+ and Showtime this weekend) includes three scenes of sex and intimacy that—through the use of foreplay, kink, and unflinching choreography—tell you a lot about the characters involved and the ways illicit sexuality could manifest in the safety of private places. That the scenes were created by a gay writer, a gay director, and two gay lead actors may have contributed to their blisteringly realistic sexiness.

In a year chockablock with TV and movies that depict gay sex with steamy realism (see: Red, White & Royal Blue), we may be in an era of Peak TV Sex. Below, Nyswaner and Minahan walked us through how they created the first episode's sex scenes—and how establishing safety and comfort through tight choreography and working with an intimacy coordinator actually resulted in some of TV's hottest sex.

Men's Health: What was your approach to depicting gay sex and intimacy on Fellow Travelers?

Daniel Minahan [Director]: When Ron and I started setting up the show and putting together the creative team, we went through the scripts, and I feel like the sex scenes were already beautifully indicated. But then we went through and really got specific and made beats. I wanted to know exactly what Ron wanted to see. And we were in agreement.

Ron Nyswaner [Creator]: They were about power.

DM: Yeah, every scene was about an exchange of power. It's Washington; these are political people engaged in political theater. But especially in sexuality. From the first episode, you really see how Tim [Jonathan Bailey] is less experienced than Hawk [Matt Bomer]. He's overwhelmed by Hawk. And then Tim begins to understand his value and his power. You see Tim leverage sex into an invitation to a powerful D.C. party. Hawk kind of puts them through his paces, but in the end, after Hawk orgasms, we cut to Tim wandering around this swanky party full of Washington elites. That dynamic was by design in the scripts.

There is a use of kink in a lot of these scenes, or at least they're not milquetoast sex scenes. How much of that was about that depiction of power, and how much was just about the depiction of realistic queer sex?

RN: I think it was both. Oscar Wilde said it before me: "Sex is about power." We tried for every decision in Fellow Travelers to be based in story or character development. So it wasn't just, Gay men have this kind of sex, so let's put that in the show. For example, in later episodes, we show people having sex in an alley and in the back room of a sex club in San Francisco. And that was about telling the story of where we were, of the scene. We were kind of relentless about there being a story-driven point to every scene, including the sex scenes.

DM: There needs to be an importance to the sex. When Hawk goes cruising at the public toilets in Lafayette Park, he's compelled to do that. It's a very dangerous thing. And I think that the sex scene it leads into represents the risk that these people are taking. So that's why I think it was important to show it and not just kind of drift off away from the bed and out the billowing curtain of the window.

RN: Dan and I discussed how, while we didn't want to romanticize oppression, there is also something stimulating about an outlawed behavior. It ups the level of excitement, in a way.

DM: I think that's a universal thing. Doing the thing you're not supposed to do is going to be thrilling and addictive.

Speaking of that first sex scene, Hawk meets a trick named Eddie at the public bathrooms and they have sex. And there's an aggressiveness to it. Hawk doesn't give him a love tap, he doesn't give him a slap, he punches Eddie during sex. It's a different tone than the sex scenes with Tim. What were you establishing in that scene?

RN: Part of what it accomplishes, in terms of establishing who Hawk is, is that there's a bit of assertiveness and aggressiveness verging on violence in his behavior. When he's having sex with Eddie, he punches him on the back a couple of times. And the sex scene shows the viewer who Hawk is before he begins a relationship with Tim; this is who Tim is getting involved with. He doesn't want to cuddle with the guy he just picked up or exchange phone numbers. No emotion, not personal information. We're done, we had sex. Now I've got to get out of here, and you're not getting anything else out of me. And then we're going to pair that guy with Tim, this open, vulnerable guy.

DM: And it's not like Hawk's attitude is unjustified. We also wanted to show right away the danger of exposure, of anyone knowing too much about you. So when he runs into Eddie again, you really get to see that play out.

You also don't rush through the scenes of foreplay and how it establishes power dynamics in sex. In the scene where Hawk and Tim have sex for the first time, Hawk first makes Tim take Hawk's pant off, fold them, and place them neatly on the bed. Where did that come from?

RN: Dan? [both laugh] I think the folding came from Thomas's book, but how it was directed is a Dan question.

DM: He was asserting his dominance over Tim. He's setting up this dom-sub relationship right off the bat. Having someone kneeling in front of you, having them take off your shoes, having them take off your socks, having them take off your pants and fold them. It's pretty clear what he's doing.

Folding clothes has never been sexier. Marie Kondo is going to get the vapors.

RN: There's a quote. It'll be on our first full-page ad. "Folding clothes has never been sexier!"

That first sex scene between Hawk and Tim rung true to the kind of urgent, somewhat improvisational sex two people who just met can have. What was the process of choreographing the beats of that scene between yourselves, the actors, and the intimacy coordinator?

DM: It's a very detailed process because everyone needs to be in agreement about what they're comfortable with, what they're willing to do. And we need to be sure we're telling a story. So we'd go over everything with the actors and an intimacy coordinator. We actually wrote out beat sheets of the specific things that we wanted to see, and we talked them through it. And at a certain point, as the guys became more familiar and comfortable with each other, they added things. They're both really seasoned actors, and once we had the choreography down, then they'd bring these grace notes to it. In that scene that you're talking about, when they have sex for the first time, Matt actually "tastes" Johnny afterwards.

RN: When he licks his hand. It's one of my favorite moments.

DM: When I saw that, I thought, Oh my God. Because it was just so real.

You're referring to a moment when, after Hawk gives Tim a handjob and Tim ejaculates, Hawk almost absentmindedly licks his own hand. Was that something you planned out or was that a "grace note"?

DM: That's something Matt just did. And when you're directing on set, you ask yourself, Do I praise it? Or will he feel like he has to do it again? Or will he not do it because he feels self-conscious? It was a natural, spontaneous note to hit. He was just being a dirty bird. [laughs]

That scene included a lot of other moments that felt spontaneous—and thus really authentic to the way real people have sex—like when Matt licks Jonathan's armpit. How do you balance having a choreographed beat list so that everyone feels safe and comfortable while still capturing those small, surprising moments?

DM: You just need to have great actors who are comfortable and confident and willing to go there.

RN: Matt and Johnny really loved each other. So they knew that they would protect each other. Nobody came to set worried about what they might be asked to do because it had all all been discussed. The role of the intimacy coordinator isn't to tell me and Dan what the sex scene should look like or what the actors should be doing in it. We're the ones who lay those things out for the intimacy coordinator, and her role is to make everybody on the set feel safe.

DM: I equate it to a fight sequence. I've done a lot of stunt work and big, choreographed fights in my time. And it's very similar. You have a script, you come up with a plan with the actors, and then you break it down into beats. In a fight sequence, those beats might me something like: Jaime retreats, Brienne aggresses. You run them consistently, but you also know you can go back and repeat a section if you need to. And we're right there with the actors to talk to them.

For the third sex scene in that episode, when Tim leverages sex into a party invite, whose idea was the foot in the mouth?

RN: That's been in the script for a long time.

As in it's from the book? Or was from the script?

RN: [laughs] Let's just keep it at that!

Well, wherever—or whoever—it came from, it was an example of the way the show doesn't skip foreplay or depict it in a brief, rote way. Not only that, it really uses foreplay to explore power dynamics—sometime subtly, like with folded pants, and sometimes overtly, like with kink or foot play.

RN: In the writers' room, we had a rule that no particular sex act could be repeated over the eight episodes in the season. That was a fun challenge to accept, though by the time we got to episode eight, we were looking at each other like, "Now what are we going to do?"

DM: I feel like I've worked on series where there was a lot of sex, but I don't think I've ever worked on anything that was as sophisticated as this, where the sex carried so much importance to the story. So I do think there's something unique about it.

RN: We constructed the stories very carefully. We had lots of conversations about when and why a sex scene is taking place. Sex is like any other aspect of a character. When a character does something, you need to understand the decision that he's making and how the story led him there. A sex scene isn't there just to titillate you, or to offend you, or to show you how daring we are. A sex scene should happen because the story demands it happen.

So much of the sex scenes reveal something about danger and freedom. In public scenes Hawk is charming but dignified. In the first sex with the trick he picked up, Hawk is aggressive during and skittish afterward. In the next two sex scenes, he's in private and able to be tender as well as kinky, playful as well as aggressive. Did having gay actors who understand the experience of code-switching between public and private help in the building of these sex scenes?

RN: That's a question that I've been thinking about. I think the answer is yes. I think for most gay men, even today, there's a period of deciding when to identify yourself in a way that might disappoint people or upset people or make people uncomfortable. It's easier now in some ways because gay identity is much more a part of our culture than it was before, certainly than in the '50s. So I think the answer is, yes, that lived experience does contribute to the show. Does that make sense to you too, Dan?

DM: It does. Even with a text as beautifully written is this, the actor bring something new to it. For me as a director, I've prepared the scene in my mind, I've communicated with the cinematographer, I've talked to Ron about what the function of every scene should be. And then the actors show up. And for me, it's like Christmas morning. Because they've been thinking about the scene too. We made a point of rehearsing as much as we could, which was really valuable. But there's still something that happens, that X-factor, when the actors come to set on the day of shooting and bring themselves to it, their experiences and decisions and idiosyncrasies. That's when you watch and think, Wow, that's magic.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

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