Oscar nominee Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) brings Thomas Mallon’s 2007 bestselling novel Fellow Travelers to life in a Showtime limited series starring Matt Bomer (The Normal Heart) and Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton). The first episode of the eight-episode season will stream on Friday, October 27, 2023 on Paramount+ with Showtime before premiering on Showtime on October 29 at 9pm ET/PT.
“Bomer plays charismatic Hawkins Fuller, who maintains a financially rewarding, behind-the-scenes career in politics. Hawkins avoids emotional entanglements – until he meets Tim Laughlin (Bailey), a young man who’s brimming with idealism and religious faith. They begin a romance just as Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn declare war on ‘subversives and sexual deviants,’ initiating one of the darkest periods in 20th-century American history,” reads Showtime’s synopsis.
“Over the course of four decades, we follow our five main characters – Hawk, Tim, Marcus (Jelani Alladin), Lucy (Allison Williams), and Frankie (Noah J. Ricketts) – as they 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 while facing obstacles in the world and within themselves.”
Author Thomas Mallon’s official website features an excerpt of an interview Mallon did with Littoral back in 2008. One of the key questions involves the origin of the main characters, Hawkins Fuller and Tim Laughlin.
“Fuller and Laughlin aren’t based on any particular historical figures. Both contain bits and pieces of people I’ve known in my own life, which makes them like the characters one finds being created by just about any novelist of the non-historical sort,” stated Mallon. “In this regard, though, one thing in particular interested me about Laughlin. When I started to make notes on him, the first thing I put down was ‘Date of birth: November 2, 1931’ – exactly twenty years earlier than mine. I realized that, in some ways, I was going to be writing about what my own life might have been like had I been born two decades earlier.”
The limited series’ behind-the-scenes team includes executive producers Robbie Rogers (All American), Dee Johnson, series star Matt Bomer, and series creator/showrunner Ron Nyswaner. Executive producer Daniel Minahan (Halston, American Crime Story: Versace) directed episodes one and two.