Matt recently talked with People Magazine in two separate articles, wherein he talked about developing Fellow Travelers, parenthood, and being “competitive” during family time with husband Simon and their three teenage sons. I have also added the two outtakes and scans into our gallery! Check out the other article under the cut.

Professional > Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2024 > Set #008 – People
Professional > Magazines > 2024 > People Magazine – August 26, 2024

For the actor, who also served as executive producer on the Showtime series, adapting Fellow Travelers from Thomas Mallon’s 2008 novel into an eight-episode limited series was a years-long passion project with emotional ups and downs.

“I was really cynical about the prospects of the show going into production from the get-go,” he tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “A period piece is very expensive. And I think I was protecting my own heart, but I was cautious about whether or not it would actually come to fruition.”

“Oftentimes, the notes you get from executives can be kind of restrictive, like, ‘Well, let’s pull this back,’ or ‘maybe don’t do that,’” Bomer continues. “But their whole ethos was, no, go further, push yourself further, go as far as you can, see how far can you take it. And those are the kind of dreamy situations you hope for as an artist.”

“When I was nominated, I was so grateful and happy, obviously, but I was also mostly just grateful that a show like Fellow Travelers could exist in the world today, because we’ve all been around at a time when it couldn’t, and we could be on the precipice of a time when it couldn’t again,” he says. “So I’m just really thankful that we were able to get the show made.”

While their characters had a complex onscreen relationship, Bomer and Bailey meshed well professionally right from the start — from their Zoom screen test to their coffee five days before they began filming.

“We were pretty focused on set,” Bomer recalls. “But Jonny being Jonny — one of the funniest people I know — whenever we had time or we’d finished a day or before we’d started a day, he’d have me laughing quite a bit.”

People

Matt is on the cover of the latest issue of Style Magazine Italia! The interview is in Italian, if anyone would like to contribute and help out with proper translation so I can include in this post, feel free to email. Visit our gallery for some outtakes and scans!

Professional > Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2024 > Set #007 – Style Magazine Italia
Professional > Magazines > 2024 > Style Magazine Italia – July-August 2024

Matt and Jonathan were featured in one of Emmy Magazine’s issues last month, still as part of their Emmy campaign for Fellow Travelers. Visit our gallery for outtakes and scans of Matt from the issue!

Professional > Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2024 > Set #006 – Emmy Magazine
Professional > Magazines > 2024 > Emmy Magazine – No. 8 2024

The love affair in Fellow Travelers doesn’t end happily — that’s clear from the opening scene — but the Showtime limited series resonates as a romance for the ages because of its captivating 30-year journey.

“Being able to step into a gay love story as sweeping as Fellow Travelers, and to tell this brilliant story that explores four decades of liberation for gender, for women, for race, for civil rights — and the way all those intersect — is fascinating,” says costar Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton).

Inspired by Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel, the eight-episode limited series from Ron Nyswaner (Homeland) explores a forbidden relationship in 20th-century America. In 1952, Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Matt Bomer) is a war hero and State Department official who hides his sexual encounters with men. Then he sparks with the younger Tim Laughlin (Bailey), a Catholic idealist who begins working for Senator Joseph McCarthy. Their passionate romance is forced into the shadows by an executive order that authorizes a witch hunt for government workers engaged in “sexual perversions.”

The liaison servers as a framework for the evolving LGBTQ experience. The Lavender Scare of the 1950s gives way to the 1960s, when an unsatisfied, married Hawk raises two kids while Tim protests the Vietnam War. They live through the gay rights movement and White Night riots of the 1970s, and in the 1980s, they face the AIDS epidemic.

“I’ve never been part of a project that has invited so much conversation, vulnerability and engagement from complete strangers,” Bomer says. “Men and women, straight and LGBTQIA, saw themselves or someone they loved in the material.”

Both actors still feel the weight of playing their characters. “Hawk is the most complicated, multifaceted and compartmentalized character I’d ever read,” adds Bomer, an Emmy nominee for the 2014 TV film The Normal Heart. “He’s a survivor, an iconoclast and a renegade.” Seconds Bailey, “Tim’s journey in his search for something more is so [powerful]; he’s who I am today as a person. He’s a character that I have yet to fully grieve.”

Matt is part of The Hollywood Reporter’s 2024 Drama Actor Emmy roundtable, alongside Jon Hamm, David Oyelowo, Clive Owen, Callum Turner, and Nicholas Galitzine. Check out two outtakes and scans in our gallery, and their conversation below! There should be a video available soon, I will update this post when it’s released.

Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2024 > Set #004 – The Hollywood Reporter – Drama Actors Roundtable
Professional > Magazines > 2024 > The Hollywood Reporter – June 05, 2024

What was the funniest or strangest feedback you’ve gotten or read about yourself?

DAVID OYELOWO I once auditioned for a director, who, in the middle of the audition, said, “This isn’t working.” That was pretty bad.

JON HAMM But also, turns out it was working. And it remains working.

OYELOWO Yes.

HAMM In a similar vein, I had a head of this television network tell my representatives, actually, that Jon Hamm will never be a television star.

NICHOLAS GALITZINE How wrong they were.

MATT BOMER Name names.

GALITZINE Yeah, spill the tea.

HAMM He’s no longer at the head of that network.

BOMER I know exactly who it is.

OYELOWO Why, did they say the same thing to you?

BOMER Not far from it. (Laughter.)

Does a comment like that sink you or motivate you?

HAMM I think I heard about it much later in the history of things, because it was one of those things where I had auditioned for this person and this network over and over and over again, as one does, and for whatever reason didn’t get the part, and didn’t get the part, and didn’t get the part. It would always come down to the last two, me and the guy who’s going to get it. But it was one of those things. Steve Martin talks about it in his book, but auditioning is the worst. It just stinks, but that’s the only way we’ve got. And there’s so many variables that are completely out of your control, so the ability to let it go is an amazing point in one’s career. And then, of course, that’s when you don’t ever have to audition again.

CALLUM TURNER I like auditioning.

BOMER I do too.

GALITZINE You do not. Really?

CLIVE OWEN Do you?

HAMM God bless you.

OK, why do you like it?

TURNER Because you get into the room, and you get a feel for the director and the people you are going to work with.

HAMM But do you still do that? Everything’s on tape now, isn’t it?

TURNER Yeah, I just auditioned the other day for something; it was nice to go in and to play. There was a crossover for me. I hated auditioning, and then one day I realized that they want you to get the part. They’re on your side — they’re not going to waste their time with you for no reason.

OYELOWO I think it’s the stuff around it. It’s walking into a waiting room and seeing 10 versions of yourself.

And it’s often the same people that you’re auditioning against.

GALITZINE Yeah, over and over, “Good to see you again.”

OYELOWO And sometimes you have that terrible setup where you can hear everyone.

GALITZINE You go, “I should’ve done it like that!”

OYELOWO Or I think, “I’m going to go in there and everyone’s going to be listening to me.” And then it’s going home, and the self-loathing, and the anticipation, and the, “Did I get it? Did I not?” The waiting, and all of that. So, it’s the stuff around auditioning that can be really challenging.

Nicholas, your Idea of You co-star Anne Hathaway did say recently that you could have chemistry with a lamp, which could qualify as strange or funny feedback.

GALITZINE It’s true. I’ve been getting a lot of vibes.

TURNER I saw him earlier. The lamp was flickering.

GALITZINE Watch out, it’s very potent. (Laughs.) Honestly, that was an amazing audition experience where I had a very conducive room, and it makes all the difference. You come out of it with like this performance high.

TURNER Mm-hmm.

GALITZINE It’s less feedback, as much as it was the look of horror on the casting director’s face. But when I went into audition for young Tarzan, there were no lines, and I was told that I had to pretend that I had an orange that someone was trying to steal from me and I had to guard it. And you know when you don’t go for something entirely, and it just seems very feeble and pathetic and wrong? That is a moment that keeps me awake at night. I think about it a lot.

So, it was motivating for you?

GALITZINE You could say that.

HAMM You’ll never eat an orange again. (Laughter.)

OYELOWO But that chemistry thing is a real thing. If you get to do chemistry reads, which is something I do love doing because there’s an excitement as to, “Is this going to be the person I’m going to get to do this with?” But when it doesn’t work, when the chemistry isn’t there, oh my Lord. Because there’s an alchemy to it, and you can’t quite put your finger on why something works or it doesn’t, and you know within seconds.

And then you see these actresses again. Is that awkward?

OYELOWO Yeah. (Laughter.) I’m thinking of one experience in particular, and I’m not going to mention who it is, but it was so not the right fit. And you can feel it in the room, palpably, to a comedic degree, actually, to the point where it’s a coming-up-in-hives thing. I definitely had that with that experience.

OWEN It’s better to find out then than —

HAMM Week two.

OYELOWO Yeah, which is why you do it.

Looking back at your careers, what?felt, at the time, like the biggest risk?

OYELOWO I remember being at a time in my career where I just felt like I wasn’t being challenged enough. I went into my agency, I said this, then the next thing that hit my doormat was a film called Nightingale. It was just me, in a house, having killed my mother. Eighty pages with no one else. And that was as terrified as I’ve ever been, so be careful what you wish for. And, yeah, it was a risk, but it was definitely one that paid off.

TURNER And there’s no way that you can’t be scared, either. It’s such a vulnerable thing.

HAMM For sure.

TURNER Sometimes I’ve laid by myself and stared at my ceiling and thought, “What am I doing?” just before something’s about to come out.

BOMER Oh, yeah.

TURNER It’s real fear. It’s crippling. But then it’s also the thing that pushes you on, it’s the thing that makes you get back out there, because it’s thrilling at the same time. I just don’t want to be laughed at. That’s my fear, really.

It’s interesting to be able to identify what exactly the fear is. Can the rest of you do that?

BOMER Oh, I feel like I don’t want to let folks down.

GALITZINE Yeah, that’s a big one.

OWEN And it doesn’t matter how much you’ve done. Every time you go into a new thing, the potential to fail is hovering around — the potential to not actually do it as well as you hope you can, is always there. It never goes away.

Clive, early in your career, you were on a very popular television show, and at its height, you decided to pivot and take a role in a movie that, I believe, surprised people.

OWEN I got into acting because I wanted to play different parts. And very young, I landed this big TV show called Chancer, which got a lot of heat, and then I started to get offered a lot of stuff like that. Mainstream TV. And even at that very young age, I was very aware that I wanted a long career, but a career that was as varied as possible. And then this writer-director came to me with Close My Eyes, which was about an incestuous relationship with a brother and sister, very delicate, very beautifully written, and I remember at that time thinking, “It’s hugely important I do this because I just don’t want to follow this one thing.” That impetus has been with me ever since. And sometimes it can be a hugely scary, challenging thing, but the worst thing that can happen is you’ll be bad. I’ve been bad before. I’ll be bad again.

Does the team around you try to talk you out of these choices?

OWEN I have never listened to anybody else. Ultimately, you are the one who has to go to work every day. I do what I want to do because that’s what’s going to sustain me through it.

read more

Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey have graced the cover of the latest issue of GQ Hype! Photographed by Quil Lemons and interviewed by Raymond Ang, they delved into the story of Fellow Travelers, LGBTQ+ issues, and more. Check out a snippet of the interview below, and some photos in our gallery! Keep an eye out on our gallery (or follow us on our socials), I’ll be adding scans as soon as I’m able to get them.

Professional > Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2023 > Set #004 – GQ Hype
Professional > Magazines > 2023 > GQ Hype – December 2023

Part epic love story, part political thriller, Fellow Travelers begins in 1950s Washington, D.C., with an illicit affair between the strapping Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller (Bomer), a State Department official savvy to the ways of power, and the earnest, energetic Timothy “Tim” Laughlin (Bailey), the kind of wide-eyed idealist who goes to D.C. wanting to change the world. When they first meet, Tim is a conservative Catholic boy; his passionate, intensely erotic affair with Hawk both liberates him and throws him off his path.

Through the decades-spanning run of their relationship, the series takes us from the Lavender Scare of the 1950s—when a McCarthy-era policy that institutionalized homophobia expelled many “sexual deviants” from government, resulting at one point in a suicide a day—to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

The series is based on the Thomas Mallon novel of the same name. But where Mallon’s book generally focuses on the 1950s and the explosive romance between Hawk and Tim, the series expands the Fellow Travelers universe to reach through the decades and cover the Vietnam War protests of the ’60s and the White Night riots of 1979.

“It’s been taught that LGBTQIA+ history begins at Stonewall,” says Jelani Alladin, the actor who plays queer Black journalist Marcus Hooks in the series. “It’s a kind of false narrative. Queer people have been around taking a stand for themselves since the beginning of time.”

It feels like a disservice to call a series so sexy and so compelling as educational. But Fellow Travelers does serve as an important history lesson for younger generations who may not fully understand the battles fought before their time. “It was a really dark period in American history that obviously we’re not taught in school,” says executive producer Robbie Rogers, who prior to his work in film and TV was the soccer player who became the first openly gay man to compete in a North American professional sports league. “We’re not taught LGBT history.”

When the first episode of the series came out in late October, a viral clip showcasing Bailey and Bomer in a particularly kinky sex scene had Gay Twitter shuddering with excitement. In the scene, Bailey’s Tim uses his power as a sub to persuade Bomer’s Hawk to take him to an important D.C. party. “I’m your boy, right?” he tells Hawk. “Your boy wants to go to the party.” In surely one of this year’s hottest scenes on film or TV, we see Bailey hungrily suck on Bomer’s toes and gamely attempt to put his foot in his mouth. Earlier in the series, Hawk gives Tim the name “Skippy” after thoroughly dominating him in bed, a gesture of affection as much as of ownership.

Sex is a powerful, world-shifting force in Fellow Travelers, but it’s also a Trojan horse. While the early episodes bristle with erotic energy, every exchange between Bomer and Bailey is about power as much as it is about sex. And the further you go into Travelers, the more you realize what’s really at stake when these two hit the sack.

“Even in the ‘50s, they had joy,” Travelers creator and writer Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Philadelphia, says. “You might be struggling, but that doesn’t mean every moment of your life you’re a victim of oppression. Behind closed doors they had a life—it’s just that at any moment, the police could come through those doors and ruin that life.”

That unapologetic approach to queer desire is still pretty revolutionary in a big-budget prestige series on a major network. Gone are the days when gay characters were allowed to exist onscreen as long as they adhered to respectability politics. In Fellow Travelers, the queer characters are allowed passionate, unapologetically freaky pleasures.

“There’s no shame attached to that,” Bailey says. “And I do think Matt’s character detonates something in Tim. It’s a gift to meet someone [who does the] radical act of helping you feel less shame and understand that intimacy that can be explored in so many different ways.”

Religion is a big theme in Fellow Travelers. Hawk is bound by covenant to his wife; Tim struggles with Catholic guilt. And like many queer people, Bomer and Bailey themselves have both had to negotiate religion within their queer identities.

“It took me a long time to dismantle it and to question what I was being told,” Bailey says. “Religion is interesting because it’s the voice of the shame but also [a source of] relief. There was this person that I could speak to—and I definitely did have that full conversation with a higher power. But the contradiction is brutal. To really lean into that as a gay kid who’s not born into a gay family, you see both sides of what religion can provide, which is scathing judgment—as I felt it looking back—but also a real space for catharsis and nourishment.”

Bomer says he has an individualized approach to religion: “It’s something that I’ve found for myself over years and years of exploration. It’s just highly personal that way.” Bomer is proud to have raised his kids in a truly intersectional environment. “They go to an Episcopal school, but they’re in school with Muslim kids, with Jewish kids,” he says. “We gave them that experience and then let them find their own way from there.”

You can read the full interview over at GQ’s website, click the link below!

GQ Hype

The stars of Fellow Travelers, Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Jelani Alladin, and Noah J. Ricketts, are featured in the September/October 2023 issue of OUT Magazine! I have added scans and some outtakes into the gallery!

Professional > Magazines > 2023 > OUT – September/October 2023
Professional > Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2023 > Set #001 – OUT

The cast of the upcoming film, The Boys in the Band, spoke exclusively with Attitude Magazine to discuss the film and the conversations surrounding LGBTQ representation and equality they hope the movie will spark. The feature also includes new images from the film. Check them out, along with scans, in our gallery!

Last April, Matt talked with Backstage magazine through a short Instagram live and discussed The Sinner and the discoveries he made through portraying the character of Jamie Burns. This interview is also featured in the June 25th issue of the magazine, you can view the scan in our gallery!

On the June 1st issue, Entertainment Weekly brought an exclusive look into The Boys in the Band. Check the behind the scenes video, and go to our gallery for the digital scans.

Matt is on cover of BHL Magazine, in its Summer issue. You can grab your digital copy via Issuu, or subscribe. The pictures used was part of the Todd Snyder Fall campaign, and you can find it in high quality in our gallery as well.