Matt Bomer breaks down his Emmy-nominated turn in Fellow Travelers

Matt Bomer, who made his onscreen debut in 2000 (on the soap opera All My Children), is perhaps best known as the wily thief Neal Caffrey in White Collar, the stripper Ken in the Magic Mike movies, or the fashion reporter Felix Turner in The Normal Heart. But we’d argue that there’s another role that should spring to mind.

In Showtime’s excellent miniseries Fellow Travelers, which is based on Thomas Mallon’s novel, Bomer plays the cutthroat yet soft-hearted Hawk Fuller. A closeted man working in politics during the ‘50s, Fuller falls in love with the demure Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey). Their sweet, sexy romance spans decades, with the tension of American history—from McCarthyism to the AIDS epidemic—looming in the background. And both actors, rightfully, received Emmy nominations for their moving performances. 

The A.V. Club spoke to Bomer about why he was willing to spend years with Fellow Travelers and what it’s like to “let go” while tackling this character.   

The A.V. Club: Congratulations on your second Emmy nomination. It’s been exactly 10 years since your first one for The Normal Heart. How does it feel? 

Matt Bomer: Ah, I know; I was thinking about it earlier. It’s already been 10 years. I was surprised when I heard that. Obviously, it’s always great to be recognized by your peers in this way because it’s the highest honor in television. For Fellow Travelers, it means a lot that we were even able to get this project made. And then to have it received the way it has in the world, it’s been overwhelming. 

AVC: What led you to both act and produce Fellow Travelers? 

MB: If you’re lucky, you get a certain role that comes to you at the right time, where you’ve gotten to work on projects that prepared you for it. I was very fortunate that Ron Nyswaner, our series creator, and [executive producer] Robbie Rogers brought this to me four years ago, and I was able to be involved early on. They saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, and I certainly hadn’t done anything work-wise that would indicate to them that I could do this. But it’s been a gift and an honor to portray a member of my community from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. All the jobs I’ve done, and even working on Maestro right before filming this, were so informative to me as an actor. I don’t think I could have played Hawk had I not gone through a lot of those experiences before.

AVC: What was it about Hawk that pulled you in?

MB: Hawk was the role brought to me when they approached me for the show’s development. When I read Thomas Mallon’s novel, which I consumed in about two days, those are the eyes I was looking through in the story. You’re kind of objective the first time you read the material, but then from there on out, it was subjective through his point of view for me. That was the game plan from the get-go, and that’s what the studio and network wanted as well. I was just the beneficiary of other people’s ideas. I do feel like this is a role I might not have even seen the script for 10 years ago. To get the opportunity to play such a rich, nuanced, complicated character was the gift of a lifetime.

AVC: Was your approach for getting into Hawk’s mindset different considering you were playing him through decades of his life?

MB: I was really lucky to have had the material for about two years before we started filming. That’s my favorite thing, to have the luxury of time with a character. I either want two years or two weeks. Both are extremes that work well for me. In this case, I drew influence from all over the place, even abstract sources. I did the backstory work and text work, given the circumstances of the role, which in this case was 65 years’ worth of backstory. You try to get some of the intellectual stuff out of the way, but also familiarize yourself with the period, what a day in his life would have looked like, and what was going on in the government, and each of these decades in society. 

I worked with a great dream work teacher named Kim Gillingham, and we put together a ritual with the characters in each of the different decades. I worked with a great movement coach, Jean-Louis Rodrigue, who gave me subtle gradations to change in my body as the character aged. The tricky thing about a project like this is that you’re aging through midlife. It’s not like you’re 18 and then 80. There are subtle physical gradations that happen. People in their 60s are still very vital. They’re not infirm by any means. So we wanted to make sure it was very subtle what we were doing. So that helped me with the physical and emotional mindset of Hawk. 

We also had such a phenomenal creative team all around. I’d worked with Daniel Minahan on The Assassination Of Gianni Versace. We were lucky to have him set the tone and the palette of Fellow Travelers and be our director for the first two episodes. All of our directors were phenomenal—Simon Dennis, who established the look as our director of photography, the hair and makeup team, the costume team, all of it combined. When I was thinking of myself in my ‘60s or the ‘80s, I thought, “Oh my gosh, this could go so wrong.” I had just come off of Maestro, where I’d seen Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan pull it off, so that helped. 

One of my favorite experiences in this particular filming process though was seeing Jonny. I made sure I didn’t see his look for each decade until we were on set together. So it was such a joy to get to see the nuances he was bringing to the character with each decade. That was for all of the actors, including Allison Williams, Jelani Aladdin, and Noah J. Ricketts.

AVC: One of Hawk’s most intense and gut-wrenching scenes is when he finally confronts his grief over his son’s death. What was it like working on that?

MB: It’s an extraordinary challenge to trust an eight-hour story when you have a character who is concealing his emotions and who has so many walls up in terms of his vulnerability and intimacy. I’d been holding back for so long with the character. It’s a gift as an actor to have a tragic secret that you get to try to overcompensate for or cover or hide or not face. I was almost dreading that scene because it goes from an intense, bacchanalian dark intimacy scene into his greatest vulnerability being exposed. Then he does what Hawk always does when he feels exposed: He attacks. And then there’s the breakdown after that. They didn’t break up the scene, and it was all in one take. 

It’s one of those moments that you just have to let go and be thankful that you have an amazing scene partner like Jonathan Bailey and Morgan Lever, the other actor in that scene, and trust that they’re going to be there for you. Jonny was there for me physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I knew he had my back. I had also lived in the character for several hours at that point. So I just had to trust that the history Hawk and Tim had built would come through and not try to preplan anything or make any choices before the cameras were rolling.

AVC: What other Fellow Travelers scenes have stayed with you? 

MB: Ron’s writing was so beautiful and inspiring that I wanted to just rise to the occasion every day. There wasn’t a single day when I wasn’t looking forward to going to work. I was so excited to be there, and I knew we had great dynamics between the cast and creatives on set. We’d spent so much time buttoned up so tightly in the ’50s that to get to the bacchanalian ’70s, it was fun to let it rip a little bit. Even though Hawk does have that horrible, tragic secret that he’s compensating for, all of a sudden we went from the suits that were up to our throats to being in short shorts on a beach. It was a “Wait, where are we right now?” moment. It was kind of liberating. 

There are so many scenes with Jonny, Allison, Jelani, and Noah. The last scene of the series feels special though. I did not know that we were going to have actual quilt squares from the AIDS Quilt. Walking onto set that day was honestly a religious experience for me. I was able to get out of my own head and pay tribute to a generation that we lost, a generation that we owe so much to. To look at Roy Cohn’s actual square after having had seven hours of history with that character played by Will Brill…it was one of those days when I was lucky enough to be there and know that this project was so much bigger than me.

AVC: Did you make conscious decisions about the type of projects you wanted to do after White Collar, your longest-running TV show that also wrapped up 10 years ago? 

MB: It’s hard because when you have something that resonates in any way, folks are always trying to encourage you to keep doing the same thing, or those are the opportunities that tend to come your way. I feel fortunate that I had creative relationships with Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti, and others who believed in me and gave me opportunities to stretch myself in different directions as an actor. I try not to make too many conscientious decisions. It’s more of an intuitive thing. When I read something and if I think, “Wow, something about this scares me in a good way—I don’t know if I can do it or not, or I’ve never done it before,” then that’s interesting to me as an artist. But sometimes I just take what I can get to be able to work and do what I do. I will say that when I finished Fellow Travelers, I had been playing these very buttoned-up, repressed people for a while, so I said, “I need to do a comedy. I need to go to work and laugh.” Luckily, that fell into my lap. 

AVC: Yeah, you’re doing Hulu’s upcoming Mid-Century Modern. What can you tell me about it? 

MB: We just finished the pilot a few weeks ago. It’s a dream team of collaborators. Nathan Lane is in it. He was in Terrence McNally’s play called The Lisbon Traviata. I remember as a teenager looking at him on the cover of the play and thinking, “Who is this guy? He’s amazing.” This was before his role in The Birdcage and stuff. He’s such an icon to me, as are the others involved, like Nathan Lee Graham and Linda Lavin. The show’s from Max Mutchnick and David Kohan; I worked with them on Will & Grace. Jimmy Burrows, the best director in the business, is the director. It’s a really beautiful story about a found family. It was inspired by Max, David, and this group of men who decided not to have kids and were finding out what family meant for them at a certain chapter in their lives. It’s a lot of that but the writing is hysterical with an emotional base.

AVC: You were a producer on Fellow Travelers and now Mid-Century Modern. Is that something you want to do with more projects? 

MB: Yes, I’m thankful that on the new series I’m also an executive producer. It’s exciting. What was really nice about producing Fellow Travelers, and I felt like this a bit when I became a director as well, is that you get to see all 360 degrees of a production and be with it from when it gets sold to when it finally goes into production and post-production and, bringing your relationships to the project or creative input to the marketing campaign, those were interesting to see. As a producer, I get in where I fit and help. If I’m able to give voice to projects that I feel reflect our community profoundly, I always want to do that. Sometimes you do that and it sees the light of day and sometimes it doesn’t, you know? I’m glad Fellow Travelers broke through.

AVC: With the Emmys recognition, do you feel satisfied with how your Fellow Travelers’ journey is concluding? 

MB: A big part of the conclusion for me was filming that last scene we spoke about. You rarely get to play a character for so many years of their life, but to get to have a scene that’s all about closure and birth at the same time is great. Here’s a man who’s not only saying goodbye; he’s acknowledging and making peace with the loss of the love of his life. But also his daughter is there to see him stepping into his authenticity for the first time at 65. What a profound gift to get as an actor. To me, that was the conclusion. I still had a week of filming after that scene, which made it hard to keep going, but I knew our entire creative team had poured their hearts and souls into it. It’s one of those projects where I didn’t want to read reviews. I didn’t want to pay attention to the noise. I just wanted to be grateful and let the richness of the experience be its own experience.

AVC: Do you want to go back and read anything now at this stage, knowing what the response has been? 

MB: No, the thing for me has been the interactions with people because this isn’t a show where people can casually say, “Oh, I liked it.” I’ve noticed they want to have nuanced discussions. I’ve had people come up to me and cry and hold my hands. I get the sense it’s really due to Ron’s writing. They see their humanity reflected in the work, whether they had an uncle who was a Hawk, a cousin who was a Tim, a sister who was a Lucy, or a friend who was a Marcus or Frankie. What I’ve learned is they see themselves or someone they love reflected in the work. What a thing to be a part of when I think of myself as a young kid growing up and reading Larry Kramer, Terrence McNally, and Tony Kushner. The fact that I’ve gotten these interactions because of Fellow Travelers…I can’t ask for anything more.