Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer are set to play secret lovers in a new period drama, and we’re already swooning at the thought of it. The handsome actors have been cast in the Showtime limited series “Fellow Travelers,” set in Washington DC in the 20th century and based on Thomas Mallon’s novel of the same name.
Bailey will portray Tim Laughlin, a young Fordham University graduate who’s committed to his religious beliefs, while Bomer will play Hawkins Fuller, a charismatic State Department official who avoids relationships until meeting Tim. “Girls” alum Allison Williams is also set to star as Lucy Smith, the daughter of a senator and a longtime friend of Hawkins.
Showtime describes the eight-episode series as “an epic love story and political thriller, chronicling the volatile romance of two very different men who meet in the shadow of McCarthy-era Washington.” Hawkins and Tim’s relationship begins just as US Senator Joseph McCarthy and prosecutor Roy Cohn declare war on “subversives and sexual deviants,” and it blossoms as the characters cross paths over the course of four decades — starting in the 1950s, at Vietnam War protests in the 1960s, and later on during the AIDS crisis of the ’80s.
