Jonathan Bailey interview: ‘Fellow Travelers’
“I haven’t grieved Tim and I don’t think I ever will,” declares Jonathan Bailey about the experience of playing the idealistic and lovestruck Tim Laughlin in Showtime’s acclaimed limited series “Fellow Travelers.” The role has earned Bailey a Critics’ Choice Award this year for Best Supporting Actor. It was the latest in a string of increasingly high profile roles for the Olivier Award-winning actor, who broke into the American mainstream with his role as eldest son Anthony in the smash Netflix drama “Bridgerton.” Beyond all the recognition and awards talk, Bailey says the role has had more of an impact on him personally. “It’s changed sort of who I am,” he says in a recent chat with Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “For me it was a life changing and informative thing, and I know that.”
The series, which focuses on Tim’s passionate love affair with closeted society man Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer), spans more than three decades, decades that saw great change for the LGBTQ+ community. The importance of seeing the community through that lens of history was not lost on Bailey. “Tim felt really strongly the push and the pull of the moments of extreme aggressive control on queer people that’s then followed by these beautiful moments of joy and release,” he says. “That cycle is, over time, really tiring. But I’m here today because of all the people that came before me and, and every gay man and every gay woman and everyone who doesn’t experience full privilege knows exactly what that feels like.”
The push and pull Bailey refers to is also a part of what keeps Tim coming back to Hawk in spite of the latter’s often manipulative and dismissive behavior. “[Tim] believes that the act of loving, which is something that we all can learn from, has more power to it than what’s in the word,” explains Bailey. “It’s more fulfilling to be the one loving harder than the one who’s not receiving the love. I think that what he understands about his experience. What Hawk has given him is a life of being able to love and he never gives up on Hawk.”
While much has been made of the show’s explicit sexuality, Bailey hopes that people realize that those intimate moments can be both sexy and serve as a metaphor for the struggles faced by the queer community. “That’s exactly what you would want because it’s a full, rounded experience of these people who are in love,” he argues. “If you’re dealing with the socio-political landscape by which these two people came together, and your dealing with the oppression and the shame that is dripping through from their leaders, you need to see how that affects two people coming together. The sex sex scenes are like a battleground for them in order to feel safe and loved, all the things that other people are afforded.”