Showtime has released a teaser trailer for Fellow Travelers, an eight-episode limited series based on Thomas Mallon’s novel, starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey. Jelani Alladin (The Walking Dead: World Beyond), Allison Williams (Get Out) and Noah J. Ricketts (American Gods) round out the main cast. Co-produced by Fremantle and Showtime, the network also revealed Fellow Travelers will premiere on Paramount+ With Showtime this fall.
Created by Oscar-nominated writer Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia), Fellow Travelers is a love story and political thriller, chronicling the volatile romance of two very different men who meet in the shadow of McCarthy-era Washington. Bomer will play charismatic Hawkins Fuller, who maintains a financially rewarding, behind-the scenes career in politics. Hawkins avoids emotional entanglements – until he meets Tim Laughlin, a young man 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.
Over the course of four decades, we follow the five main characters – Hawk, Tim, Marcus (Alladin), Lucy (Williams), and Frankie (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 in themselves.
Bomer and Nyswaner will executive produce with Robbie Rogers (All American, My Policeman) and Dee Johnson. Daniel Minahan (Halston, American Crime Story: Versace) will executive produce and direct the first two episodes.
Watch the trailer above.