Ayla Ruby
Ten years after his first Emmy nomination for The Normal Heart, Matt Bomer is back again, earning another one for his work in Fellow Travelers. The actor, who also executive produced the politically thrilling historical miniseries, is nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Limited Or Anthology Series Or Movie. On the show, he plays Hawk Fuller, a closeted war hero who works for the State Department and is a close advisor to a Senator during the height of McCarthyism and the Pink Scare.
We sat down with Bomer to talk about the story and why Fellow Travelers is so impactful. He shared some of the homework that went into portraying a complex character and who we see through four decades. Bomer talked about working with Ron Nyswaner and so much more. Read on or listen below for the full conversation
Ayla Ruby: Can you share what the nomination means for you, and just share any of your feelings on that?
Matt Bomer: I’m just so grateful, honestly, that we live in a world where we’re able to make this show and have it be out there in the world. And the fact that it’s gotten the response that it has has really been the icing on the cake. It’s very nice to be acknowledged by your peers, and it obviously means a great deal to me. And I’m just… Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what to say other than I’m just extremely grateful.
Ayla Ruby: That’s wonderful. So from what I’ve read, this story kind came about, or you came on board this project during the pandemic. Can you talk about what drew you into it and why this story and why it was the right moment for this?
Matt Bomer: Well, I was just very fortunate that Ron Nyswaner and Robbie Rogers brought me the book four years ago in the middle of the pandemic. I read it in a couple of days. When they told me about the book, I was immediately excited and intrigued by the characters, and I thought Thomas Mallon had written this incredibly insightful, educational, well drawn, complex, multidimensional world. And then when I heard what Ron wanted to do with the story and how we decided to expand it to include the Marcus and Frankie characters and go through multiple decades with this love affair and carry it through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, all while this relationship kind of revolves around these huge moments in history that affect all the characters and the story, it just seemed so singular and there was something that felt very prescient about it.
And I didn’t know if anybody was going to invest in a multi-decade queer love story with an entirely queer creative team. So I was just so grateful that we had Fremantle and Showtime and ultimately Paramount Plus behind us, and there were executives who really just encouraged us to push the story forward.
Ayla Ruby: I mean, it worked. It’s so powerful and I just can’t… It’s been sitting with me for a while, and I just can’t stop thinking about it. So it’s amazing. So I want to talk about Hawk because he’s such a complex character, right? He’s dealing with all these different things like love, ambition, political persecution. How do you approach such a complex character and through many, many decades, like you said?
Matt Bomer: Well, I was the beneficiary of being with this for a couple of years before we started filming. And so I had time to educate myself about the time period, what his job would be like, what his life would be like to build 65 years of backstory with the character so that by the time you show up on set, you have a really, hopefully a lived experience in your body that you can draw on. But I tried to draw from every source I could. I worked with a movement teacher to sort of make minor adjustments. It’s always tricky when you have characters who age through middle age. It’s not like it’s the full flush of youth all the way to a walker. It’s like there are very subtle gradations. People who are in their 60s are still very vital, especially somebody like Hawk.
So working all that out so that… And just doing all the work you always do as an actor, but… Even esoteric things, I remember being at a beach and there was a guy who had a falcon, the falcon’s job was to scare away all the seagulls. And I said, “Have you ever worked with a hawk?” Because I knew Thomas Mallon had named him that for a reason. And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, what can you tell me about them?” He said, “Hawks fly above everything and just get the whole lay of the land. And they zoom in when they want something and ambush it.” And I thought, well, that’s so much of the character in a nutshell. And so even little things like that were moments that really informed how I wanted to approach the role.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s amazing. And that actually makes total sense just in the context of how you play… That’s wow. He’s got this evolution through the series, and it ends with him kind of finally being brave and finally being able to talk about his truth. Can you talk about the evolution through the series and kind of what that was like?
Matt Bomer: Well, one thing that’s kind of easy to forget about the character when you’re eight hours in is that all the love he was exposed to early in his life was equivalent to death. He had Kenny, who was sort of his rosebud, who was the first real love of his life, who tried to follow him into the military and then died, was killed in the war. Then he lost his entire platoon. Then he had this traumatic experience with his father. And so any intimacy is equivalent to death for him. And that’s where he starts out in the 50s. The stakes are so real. An estimated 10,000 people lost their jobs in the government during the Lavender Scare. And a lot of people committed suicide because not only were their personal lives, which they’d worked so hard, understandably, to conceal, exposed to the world around them. Everything that they had worked for in their career was brought to an end.
And so the stakes of the game he is playing are so real. But I also love that he has this kind of rage against the machine and where he’s going to have his cake and eat it too, as kind of an FU to the system at large. And so that was the entry point. And then really, it’s the meaning of the Tim character that starts to break down those walls very, very slowly. But one of the really challenging things about this part is that while everyone, and even the world is changing around him, until the 80s, Hawk really changes the least. He has very minor changes. And Tim always finds a way to bring him out of his shell and put him in touch with who he is and give him some sense of freedom.
But it’s not really until the 80s that he starts to make really profound tectonic shifts in his character. And it’s a challenging thing as a performer or an actor or an artist to trust an eight-hour story and to not really show any vulnerability openly until hour seven to let it all be covered and buried. That was a really… I’m just glad we had great directors in the show who encouraged me to hold back.
Ayla Ruby: I want to talk about, I think that moment, that real heartbreaking moment of vulnerability in hour seven, I think we’re talking about the same thing. So it’s where Tim is kind of comforting Hawk over Jackson’s death. And I’d love if you could talk about what went into that scene and share how that all worked, because it was very powerful again.
Matt Bomer: Well, thank you. I mean, that scene is really an emotional hangover because he has this really tragic secret that his son has died that he’s hiding, that he can’t even look at. And when it’s exposed, ultimately in spite of himself, he does something very Hawk like, which is when his vulnerability is exposed, he attacks, and then it’s sort of the emotional hangover after that entire breakdown. And it’s interesting that it just comes from such a raw moment where he is literally and figuratively naked and broken down, and you really get the sense that Tim is the only person in the world who he could share that with and be that open and vulnerable with.
Ayla Ruby: So the relationship between Tim and Hawk is really so interesting. And I’ve heard people talk about Hawk being almost an antagonist for Tim. How do you see their relationship? How do you see that dynamic between them?
Matt Bomer: Well, it’s very hard, even in two years after starting filming, it’s hard to be objective about it because your job as an actor is to be subjective. And I think there’s a push-pull to the relationship honestly. I think in Hawk’s mind, there are certain decisions he makes and choices that he makes that are to protect Tim. Because the reality is if they are exposed, it’s the end of both of their lives as they know it. And so as an actor, my job is to understand why he makes those decisions, why he has those walls. But there are times when Tim is pulling him out of his shell, and there are times when he’s bringing Tim back into his own body so that he can protect himself. And so I think like any great relationship, written relationship, Ron Nyswaner did such a beautiful job of just this back and forth and how there is this sort of gravitational pull with these two men because they are the loves of each other’s lives that keeps pulling them together no matter how far apart they try to go from each other.
Ayla Ruby: So it’s based on a book, but it’s also, a lot of it is not in the book, right? Ron, like you mentioned, collaborated on it and had a lot of different things that are not necessarily on the pages of the book. Can you talk about the collaboration process with him? Can you talk about what that was like in creating this character?
Matt Bomer: Yeah. I mean, it was the collaboration of a lifetime. It was such a beautiful, easy, back and forth that we had throughout. I mean, I’m kind of a homework nerd, so I read the novel back to front and had all these things highlighted. And I would bring it to him. He’d say, “Listen, I love that you respond to the novel the way you did, but now you need to let all that go and let my scripts be your novel.” And I was like, “Okay, all right. Get it. I got it.”
But Ron was there. He was never overly prescriptive. I think we had had enough initial conversations that by the time we were on set, he understood what I was trying to do with the character. But he was there every single take of every single scene I did. And I did 96 out of 100 days on the show, and he was running a writer’s room and working on edits at the same time as being on set for me. And so it was honestly, when I feel that kind of dedication from a collaborator or creator, I’ll make any choice you want in a scene. Any note you want to give me, let’s go. So it was really, I mean, just a really beautiful experience to get to walk through every single day of shooting with him.
Ayla Ruby: Now, besides the 90 some days of shooting, was there anything really, really challenging or super professionally gratifying to kind of bring to life with this that we haven’t talked about yet?
Matt Bomer: I mean, look, obviously when you’re working those kinds of hours, I don’t think I ever had a day that was less than 12 or 14 hours, but the writing was so good that it made you want to rise to the occasion. And Johnny and all of my scene partners, Allison, Jelani, Noah, everybody, the work they were bringing, the dedication they were bringing, the dedication of the crew, this incredibly hardworking crew who were so invested in the story as we were filming. It just inspired me every day. And no matter how tired I was, I just wanted to bring the best that I could that day. And so it was a gift. I think it was a really singular… It may never get better than this, honestly, to get to play such a rich character opposite such wonderful actors and amazing creators, and to reflect 35 years of their life and four decades of their life, I think it’s kind of as good as it gets as an actor, and I’m just so grateful that I got to be a part of it.
Ayla Ruby: Has playing Hawk changed how you view these decades of history, or has it impacted kind of how you view these decades of history?
Matt Bomer: Well, yeah. I mean, I think what was so wonderful about reading the novel is that I got an education in spite of myself. It wasn’t preaching or proselytizing to me. I was learning about my community’s history, our country’s history, while falling in love with these characters and seeing it through their eyes. And so I love Hawk’s rebel heart. I think that’s something that I hope to hold onto in some regard going forward. And just the fact that I got to learn so much and take pride in my community so much and our country and the progress we’ve made over the course of filming was a real gift.
Ayla Ruby: Well, that’s wonderful. And I think we’re just about at time, but is there anything you want people to know about the show or anything about your work otherwise?
Matt Bomer: No, I feel like we’ve covered it. I’m really grateful that I got to be a part of this and that we had incredible executives behind us who pushed us to go further every day. And it was a dream job all around, truly.
Ayla Ruby: Well, thank you so much for talking, and again, it’s very powerful and beautiful. So thank you.
Matt Bomer: Thank you so much. Great talking to you.
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