It’s shocking that more people don’t know about The Lavender Scare. Showtime’s Fellow Travelers provides a thoughtful, intelligent, and resonant look at a time when queer men and women could not only not love openly but had their daily lives threatened by those who claimed they were cleansing America. Creator Ron Nyswaner is a legend in queer storytelling, and Fellow Travelers might be his more urgent work to date.
As I have interviewed some of the talent from this limited series, I learned that Nyswaner provided a list to his actors so they could get themselves more invested in the time period, and he is kind enough to recommend more titles. As Travelers expands from the sixties through the seventies and eighties, we see how change seems like it will never come. Travelers hurtles through the fear and paranoia of the Joe McCarthy era to the murder of Harvey Milk and George Moscone to the U.S. Government’s failure to protect gay men during the AIDS crisis. We begin in the shadows of the halls of our nation’s capitol only to be denied any sort of care when we needed it most.
Nyswaner and I talk about the power of Matt Bomer’s characterization of Hawkins Fuller, how Travelers does not sell Allison Williams’ Lucy short, and the importance of featuring Roy Cohn’s desires.
It should not be lost on viewers that Nyswaner was nominated for an Oscar in 1994 for writing the critically heralded drama, Philadelphia, as the AIDS crisis still raged in America. We are a nation that is still grappling with that disease’s stigma, but now we have the opportunity to look back with Nyswaner as our guide.
Fellow Travelers is, ultimately, a story that shows how love can transform us for the better, and Nyswaner has never shied away from showing the tremendous heart of a community that is told, time and time again, that they don’t deserve the same presence and respect as other American citizens. Nyswaner wields the power of his words with confidence and grace.
Fellow Travelers is streaming now on Paramount+.
