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Jonathan Bailey Talks Sexual Chemistry With Fellow Travelers Co-Star Matt Bomer
“You can’t tell the queer love story and not show how the sex is so intrinsic,” the actor tells Out.
Jonathan Bailey knows the importance of a good sex scene in telling a gay love story.
In Showtime’s upcoming historical drama Fellow Travelers, Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey play two men who meet during the age of McCarthyism in Washington, D.C. Despite it being one of the most dangerous times for LGBTQ+ people in politics, the two fall in love.
From there, the show explores their relationship (as well as one between characters played by Jelani Alladin and Noah Rickets, Jr.) over the next four decades, traveling throughout LGBTQ+ history in the United States.
But the show isn’t all drama and historical homophobia – it’s also a groundbreaking depiction of gay sex in a long-term relationship.
In the interview for Out’s latest cover story, Bailey opened up about filming those sex scenes and what it took to show a new side of gay sex on TV.
“I think it’s so important,” he said. “You can’t tell the queer love story and not show how the sex is so intrinsic.”
“It’s all something that is hard to talk about to people who come together and have separate bodies,” he continued. “But if you exist in the same body, how you negotiate that and what that means, how being submissive [affects sex], and well, really what is kink…. It’s all a thing. I just think it’s a really hearty and honest examination of something which I know I’ve always yearned to see properly explored.”
“I think it’s so nuanced and personal, isn’t it? The way that people have sex is so presumed,” Bailey says about the sex scenes in the limited series. “It definitely was the first time that I’ve seen a light being shown on the roles within a gay relationship and power and status with being submissive and dominant.”
“But to me, what I find interesting, it’s a give and take between the two,” he continued. “So actually it’s not one person going, ‘I’m now going to do this.’ It’s like they move as a unit. And I think that’s beautiful. And I feel like it always is negotiation, and I’m always interested in people who identify as one role, and I would wonder what that is.”
He even points out that in the show, they show their characters, Tim and Hawk, switching up their sexual dynamics.
“It’s a love story. So that bleeds into these scenes,” he said. “So even in the way they have sex, it’s always about generosity and communication. And that is essentially how I feel how this whole show was made on generosity and communication and truth.”
Fellow Travelers premieres October 27 on Showtime.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
