Out Hunks Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer Pair Up for Historical Period Drama 'Fellow Travelers'

Set to be a major LGBTQ+ mini-series is "Fellow Travelers," "a limited series on Paramount+ and Showtime set in 1950s McCarthy-era Washington, D.C. that is part epic love story, part political thriller that will track the "volatile romance" of two men over four decades.," writes Town and Country.

That the two leads of two of the hottest gay actors is lending excitement and authenticity to the project, which recently finished shooting in Toronto after six months. Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey made a pact when they met to watch each other backs when they began – something of a sacred vow, reports Vanity Fair. "Watch 'Fellow Travelers, and you'll understand why. The Showtime epic depicts an extraordinary intimacy between its lead characters, and asks for true vulnerability from Bomer and Bailey, who deliver without compromise."

Premiering in September, the show follows "Timothy Laughlin (Bailey), a recent college graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller (Bomer), leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair," describes Town and Country.

"'Fellow Travelers' will follow Hawk and Tim's story over four decades–as the two cross paths through the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, the drug-fueled disco hedonism of the 1970s, and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s," adds Town and Country.

"Just getting to play the character over the course of 35 years–some of the scenes that take place in the last episode for me were such a rite of passage in terms of saying goodbye to the character," Bomer told Vanity Fair. Bailey adds, "It's been just the most joyous, emotional, and also informative experience I've had on a job. I've never grieved a character more."

Oscar nominee Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia") created the show, and will executive produce alongside Bomer, Robbie Rogers, and Daniel Minahan. Minahan will also direct the first two episodes. "The ambition of going through the different decades and finding a really compelling story–nothing like that had been done, where it's an epic gay love story that has this political element that's woven through it," Rogers told Town and Country.

The part came to Bailey at just the right moment. He told Vanity Fair he always wanted to do "a sweeping gay love story... but my experience actually was that I'd never really seen them," Bailey added. "Or if I had, I hadn't seen actors like me and Matt play those roles."

One of the show's producers Robbie Rogers said "The ambition of going through the different decades and finding a really compelling story–nothing like that had been done, where it's an epic gay love story that has this political element that's woven through it,"

And expect there to be plenty of sex, when the couple do meet up. "The resulting sex scenes, capturing a range of role plays, will ring as highly authentic to gay men, and mark uncharted territory for mainstream dramatic TV–even on a network like Showtime," writes Vanity Fair.

"Not that it will be shocking to people, but I hope when people watch it, they're like, 'Oh, wow. They really went for it,'" Rogers says. The production made intimacy coordinators available to the cast throughout filming, and Bomer and Bailey felt an intrinsic trust with each other, rooted in that Cumberland Street pact. "I will be so interested to see how people respond to it," Bailey says. "To me, being queer also is about, as two men, how you negotiate your giving of your body to the other person. That is something that I've always yearned to see properly done because I know how extraordinary it is to experience it."